History of the United States I / Unit 4 USH1 0471 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The New York Conspiracy Trials
The idea
One in five New Yorkers was enslaved, and fears after Stono were fresh. Thirteen fires broke out in seventeen forty-one, including one that reduced the colony's Fort George to ashes. Rumours spread of a massive enslaved-led revolt to murder White people, burn the city and seize the colony, and that Roman Catholics had joined it. Authorities interrogated about two hundred enslaved people and arrested two hundred, a large portion of the city's enslaved population, with quick trials at City Hall.
In practice
Thirteen Black men publicly burned at the stake, seventeen executed in total, and seventy sold to the West Indies.
Where people slip
The anchor states that little evidence exists to prove that an elaborate conspiracy, like the one White New Yorkers imagined, actually existed. Seventeen people were executed for a plot the record does not support. What the trials did accomplish, the anchor says, was reinforcing White dominance and power over enslaved New Yorkers.
Your place on the trail
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