ed
plot. And the time came, after the city had gotten back to its
accustomed quietness, that the most sincere believers in the "Negro
plot" were converted to the opinion that the zeal of the magistrates
had not been "according to knowledge." For they could not have failed
to remember that the Negroes were considered heathen, and, therefore,
not sworn by the court; that they were not allowed counsel; that the
evidence was indirect, contradictory, and malicious, while the trials
were hasty and unfair. From the 11th of May to the 29th of August, one
hundred and fifty-four Negroes were cast into prison; fourteen of whom
were burnt, eighteen hanged, seventy-one transported, and the
remainder pardoned. During the same space of time twenty-four whites
were committed to prison; four of whom were executed, and the
remainder discharged. The number arrested was one hundred and
seventy-eight, thirty-six executed, and seventy-one transported! What
a terrible tragedy committed in the name of law and Christian
government! Mary Burton, the Judas Iscariot of the period, received
her hundred pounds as the price of the blood she had caused to be
shed; and the curtain fell upon one of the most tragic events in all
the history of New York or of the civilized world.[258]

The legislature turned its attention to additional legislation upon
the slavery question. Severe laws were passed against the Negroes.
Their personal rights were curtailed until their condition was but
little removed from that of the brute creation. We have gone over the
voluminous records of the Province of New York, and have not found a
single act calculated to ameliorate the condition of the slave.[259]
He was hated, mistrusted, and feared. Nothing was done, of a friendly
character, for the slave in the Province of New York, until
threatening dangers from without taught the colonists the importance
of husbanding all their resources. The war between the British
colonies in North America and the mother country gave the Negro an
opportunity to level, by desperate valor, a mountain of prejudice, and
wipe out with his blood the dark stain of 1741. History says he did
it.

FOOTNOTES:

[215] Brodhead's History of New York, vol. i. p. 184.

[216] O'Callaghan's History of New Netherlands, pp. 384, 385.

[217] Brodhead, vol. i. p. 194.

[218] Ibid, vol. i. pp. 196, 197.

[219] Dunlap's History of New York, vol. i. p, 58.

[220] O'Callaghan, p. 385.

[221] Van Tienho