A most remarkable design—­as an insurrection perhaps not as formidable as that of Cato, but in some ways the most important single event in the history of the Negro in the colonial period—­was the plot in the city of New York in 1741.  New York was at the time a thriving town of twelve thousand inhabitants, and the calamity that now befell it was unfortunate in every way.  It was not only a Negro insurrection, though the Negro finally suffered most bitterly.  It was also a strange compound of the effects of whiskey and gambling, of the designs of abandoned white people, and of prejudice against the Catholics.

Prominent in the remarkable drama were John Hughson, a shoemaker and alehouse keeper; Sarah Hughson, his wife; John Romme, also a shoemaker and alehouse keeper; Margaret Kerry, alias Salinburgh, commonly known as Peggy; John Ury, a priest; and a number of Negroes, chief among whom were Caesar, Prince, Cuffee, and Quack.[1] Prominent among those who helped to work out the plot were Mary Burton, a white servant of Hughson’s, sixteen years of age; Arthur Price, a young white man who at the time of the proceedings happened to be in prison on a charge of stealing; a young seaman named Wilson; and two white women, Mrs. Earle and Mrs. Hogg, the latter of whom assisted in the store kept by her husband, Robert Hogg.  Hughson’s house on the outskirts of the town was a resort for Negroes, and Hughson himself aided and abetted the Negro men in any crime that they might commit.  Romme was of similar quality.  Peggy was a prostitute, and it was Caesar who paid for her board with the Hughsons.  In the previous summer she had found lodging with these people, a little later she had removed to Romme’s, and just before Christmas she had come back to Hughson’s, and a few weeks thereafter she became a mother.  At both the public houses the Negroes would engage in drinking and gambling; and importance also attaches to an organization of theirs known as the Geneva Society, which had angered some of the white citizens by its imitation of the rites and forms of freemasonry.

[Footnote 1:  The sole authority on the plot is “A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy formed by Some White People, in Conjunction with Negro and other Slaves, for Burning the City of New York in America, and Murdering the Inhabitants (by Judge Daniel Horsemanden).  New York, 1744.”]

Events really began on the night of Saturday, February 28, 1741, with a robbery in the house of Hogg, the merchant, from which were taken various pieces of linen and other goods, several silver coins, chiefly Spanish, and medals, to the value of about L60.  On the day before, in the course of a simple purchase by Wilson, Mrs. Hogg had revealed to the young seaman her treasure.  He soon spoke of the same to Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee, with whom he was acquainted; he gave them the plan of the house, and they in turn spoke of the matter to Hughson.  Wilson, however, when later told of the robbery by Mrs. Hogg, at once turned suspicion upon the Negroes, especially Caesar; and Mary Burton testified that she saw some of the speckled linen in question in Peggy’s room after Caesar had gone thither.