ABSTRACT
A little-known incident in colonial New York provides some insight into the early state of affairs between the
races, while demonstrating the damaging effects of rumor. During the winter months of 1741, a Spanish vessel captured as a prize arrived in the colony. Part of the crew was comprised of blacks, who were to be sold at auction as slaves. According to J. T. Headley, a contemporary jour nalist, the slaves became “very intractable,” and in spite of constant whippings, “uttered threats that they knew would reach their masters’ ears.”2 In March, some mysteri ous fires broke out which damaged both the governor’s house and the king’s chapel. Immediately, rumors swept through the community that the captured blacks were responsible:
Panic now seized the community. Whole families were piled into every available cart and vehicle and spirited away to farms in neighboring towns. The lieutenant-governor is sued a proclamation appointing a day of fasting and humi liation.4 Blacks of all ages were arrested and hurried off to prison. A long, steady succession of executions of blacks followed, some by hanging, others by burning:
illustrates the journalist’s own susceptibility to rumor. A
good nineteenth-century liberal, Headley decries the trials of blacks that made a mockery of justice, and expresses revulsion at the brutal acts that followed. Nonetheless, he also concludes that slaves had planned and executed the fires. His evidence was a series of alleged threats made by the slaves against their masters, and certain plots reported in the past:
The fears of whites again were evident in rumors occurring at the time of the American Revolution. On November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation declaring all slaves free if they joined the British army. Stories then circulated throughout the colonies that Dunmore was holding secret meetings with blacks each night “ for the glorious purpose of enticing them to cut their masters’ throats while they are asleep.”7 It was also whispered that the king himself had promised every slave who murdered his master the plantation that had previously belonged to his owner.
