Shaping a Conspiracy: Black Testimony in the 1741 New York Plot

"The History of the Great Negro Plot in 1741, has always been a subject of curiosity," wrote the editor of the 1810 edition of Daniel Horsmanden's Journal of the Proceedings, a compilation of trial transcripts, witness depositions, and Horsmanden's recollections concerning the conspiratorial events that gripped New York City in 1741.¹ The discerning editor's observation remains true today, as scholars have produced new studies exploring many aspects of the plot and the subsequent trials. Though some of this scholarship has focused on whether there was in fact such a plot, much of the recent work has eschewed these debates in favor of more nuanced interpretations of the conspiracy and its contexts. No longer seeking solely to understand whether blacks and whites conspired during the spring and summer of 1741 to commit arson and murder in hopes of creating a biracial, quasi-egalitarian society, authors have sought to identify the multiple "discourses of conspiracy," the internal machinations of the Court and Country political factions in creating the plot, the roles of social networks, clubs, and crime in a burgeoning Atlantic port town, and the importance of historical memory. Although such inquiries have been instrumental in helping scholars recover how the extraordinary events of 1741 intersected with many of the daily political, economic, cultural, and intellectual currents of New York life, there remains a tendency to essentialize black participants as "incendiary marionettes that are manipulated from behind the scenes by the invisible hand of white saboteurs." Such a characterization is certainly not universal; some scholars, for example, have argued that the black actors' violent behavior (arson, conspiratorial planning, and the like) exhibited important elements of agency. Yet, though there is no doubt that the history of the plot and the actions of the conspirators will forever be clouded by Horsmanden's influence, such blatant mediation need not reduce black actors to either violent rebels or puppets. Such men and women were equal participants in the creation of the events of that summer, in ways that go much beyond the proceedings of that year.²

The 222-page Journal, called by one historian "one of the most startling and vexing documents in early American history," remains an important window into the eighteenth-century New York world.³ If one steps back from questions about the plot's reality, its political contexts, and Horsmanden's manipulations, one can see that much of the testimony provided by black witnesses did not concern the incredible events associated with the 1741 trials. Many of the descriptions black men and women provided about their roles in the plot detailed the utterly ordinary elements of their daily lives—their travels throughout the city, their access to alcohol, and their creolized rituals. Such elements, witnesses testified, were fundamental to the ultimate shape that the plot took. Yet, more important, such elements also contextualize the more esoteric and unbelievable aspects of the plot. Though there is little doubt that the harsh winter of 1740, the Zenger trial, and even the willingness of most white colonials to seek conspiratorial explanations for inexplicable phenomena played important parts in the shape and meaning of the 1741 plot (and why whites so readily believed that a conspiracy actually happened), such accounts do not satisfactorily clarify why black men and women were accused of acting in the specific ways they were during that hot summer. Why did whites so easily believe that blacks could set fire to many different buildings located throughout the town? Why did officials believe that gatherings of upwards of forty black men at Hughson's tavern could so easily take place and create no suspicion in the community? Why were whites convinced that blacks needed to employ elaborate rituals to allow others to join the plot? By differentiating the descriptions of ordinary activities from the extraordinary actions of the plot and by seeking context for these activities in the behavioral patterns of town blacks that existed throughout the century, one can conclude that black New Yorkers were not solely manipulated figures or violent agents of change. Rather, one...