OF A PORTION
     OF THE GOODS.—­THE ARREST OF HUGHSON, HIS WIFE, AND IRISH
     PEGGY.—­CRIMINATION AND RECRIMINATION.—­THE BREAKING-OUT OF
     NUMEROUS FIRES.—­THE ARREST OF SPANISH NEGROES.—­THE TRIAL
     OF HUGHSON.—­TESTIMONY OF MARY BURTON.—­HUGHSON HANGED.—­THE
     ARREST OF MANY OTHERS IMPLICATED IN THE PLOT.—­THE HANGING
     OF CAESAR AND PRINCE.—­QUACK AND CUFFEE BURNED AT THE
     STAKE.—­THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR’S PROCLAMATION.—­MANY WHITE
     PERSONS ACCUSED OF BEING CONSPIRATORS.—­DESCRIPTION OF
     HUGHSON’S MANNER OF SWEARING THOSE HAVING KNOWLEDGE OF THE
     PLOT.—­CONVICTION AND HANGING OF THE CATHOLIC PRIEST
     URY.—­THE SUDDEN AND UNEXPECTED TERMINATION OF THE
     TRIAL.—­NEW LAWS MORE STRINGENT TOWARD SLAVES ADOPTED.

From the settlement of New York by the Dutch in 1609, down to its conquest by the English in 1664, there is no reliable record of slavery in that colony.  That the institution was coeval with the Holland government, there can be no historical doubt.  During the half-century that the Holland flag waved over the New Netherlands, slavery grew to such proportions as to be regarded as a necessary evil.  As early as 1628 the irascible slaves from Angola,[215] Africa, were the fruitful source of wide-spread public alarm.  A newly settled country demanded a hardy and energetic laboring class.  Money was scarce, the colonists poor, and servants few.  The numerous physical obstructions across the path of material civilization suggested cheap but efficient labor.  White servants were few, and the cost of securing them from abroad was a great hinderance to their increase.  The Dutch had possessions on the coast of Guinea and in Brazil, and hence they found it cheap and convenient to import slaves to perform the labor of the colony.[216]

The early slaves went into the pastoral communities, worked on the public highways, and served as valets in private families.  Their increase was stealthy, their conduct insubordinate, and their presence a distressing nightmare to the apprehensive and conscientious.

The West India Company had offered many inducements to its patroons.[217] And its pledge to furnish the colonists with “as many blacks as they conveniently could,” was scrupulously performed.[218] In addition to the slaves furnished by the vessels plying between Brazil and the coast of Guinea, many Spanish and Portuguese prizes were brought into the Netherlands, where the slaves were made the chattel property of the company.  An urgent and extraordinary demand for labor, rather than the cruel desire to traffic in human beings, led the Dutch to encourage the bringing of Negro slaves.  Scattered widely among the whites, treated often with the humanity that characterized the treatment bestowed upon the white servants, there was little said about slaves in this period.  The majority of them were employed upon the farms, and led quiet and sober lives.  The largest farm owned by the company was “cultivated by the blacks;"[219] and this fact was recorded as early as the 19th of April, 1638, by “Sir William Kieft, Director-General of New Netherland.”  And, although the references to slaves and slavery in the records of Amsterdam are incidental, yet it is plainly to be seen that the institution was purely patriarchal during nearly all the period the Hollanders held the Netherlands.