“Every African was ready that night, with his gun or his knife at hand,” Cuffee said.
The sight of the armed men had discouraged many members of their army. But they vowed to burn the city anyway, hoping in the chaos they could rescue Caesar and flee. A week after the fire at the fort, they struck again, using the same techniqueâburning coals thrust under the eaves of a targeted house. Out of touch with the plotters, Clara was reduced to the status of a horrified spectator.
“Fire!” The cry crashed through her open window around noon on that cold March Wednesday. She followed the crowd downtown and found flames leaping from the Broad Street house of royal navy captain S. Peter Warren. With no wind and a prompt discovery, the fire engines and the bucket brigades managed to soak the roof and walls and contain the blaze in less than fifteen minutes.
A week later, the dreaded cry rang out again, around the same time of day. This time the blaze was in a big warehouse full of hay, fir, and pinewood, on the East River. There was no hope of saving the building. The flames were leaping a hundred feet above the roof when the firemen got there. Instead they worked frantically to douse the roofs and walls of all the buildings in the vicinity. Being close to the river helped. In an hour, the warehouse was a heap of guttering embers, but none of the nearby buildings caught fire.
This time, Malcolm Stapleton paid Clara a visit. “That fire in Van Zant's warehouse was set by someone,” he said. “It started in the roof,
just like the one at the governor's mansion and Warren's house. “Do you know who's doing it?”
“No,” Clara said. It was technically true. She had no idea exactly who was setting the blazes. It was probably a different slave each timeâsomeâone who had access to the various premises.
“Do you have any idea? From what you said to me when the fort burned, you're in touch with some people who want to cause serious trouble. My bet is on some of the slaves who drink at Hughson's. Who are they, beside Caesar?”
“I won't inform! I won't have that on my conscience.”
“Claraâ”
“Get out of my house.”
Upstairs, she fell on her knees before the Virgin's statue.
Tell me what to do, Holy Mother.
Silence. Was the Virgin telling her that her heart was still clotted with hate?
Three days later, another fire erupted in a cow shed at the foot of Maiden Lane. The frantic mooing of the cows alerted passersby and the blaze was extinguished in a few minutes. But there was evidence of someone hoping for a bigger conflagration. Hay had been piled almost to the ceiling and set on fire.
A half hour later, another fire burst from the upper windows of a private house only a few steps away from the cow shed. This too was quickly extinguished and the firefighters found unmistakable evidence of arson. Someone had put a hot coal beneath a straw mattress in the room, which was the sleeping quarters for the family's slave. He denied knowing anything about it. But for the first time, people began to wonder if the fires were being set by Africans. Memories of the 1712 uprising swirled to the surface of many minds.
A week later, the arsonists struck four times in one day. First a house, then a shop, then a stable, and finally another big warehouse on the East River burst into flames. The warehouse burned to the ground, but once more the surrounding buildings were saved, thanks to energetic use of the East River's water. This time a man who had climbed to the roof of a nearby warehouse saw an African run out a back door of the burning warehouse and disappear down the street. He recognized him as Cuffee Philipse.
A crowd rushed to the Philipse house and dragged Cuffee to the City Hall jail, where he joined Caesar. The fear of a Negro plot now ran rampant through the city. All the Spanish Africans were dragged to jail by excited mobs. Almost any slave who happened to be on the street was liable to find himself behind bars. Soon there were over a hundred in the crowded cells and the undersheriff insisted he could not handle any more.
Day after day, Clara prayed before the statue of the Virgin. The voice remained silent. Instead, the word
destruction
whined in her mind, mingling with the March wind that wailed outside in the streets.
Malcolm visited her again. “Catalyntie's given me an idea that could stop these fires,” he said. “She thinks the governor should issue a proclamation, offering a hundred pounds to anyone who'll come forward with information about the conspiracy.”
“That's just like her. Convinced that money can solve everything and anything.”
“I think it might work.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I want you to speak first, Clara. Before it becomes profitable. It's your chance to prove your loyalty, your honesty. To show the whole city that your race is trustworthyâeven if some of them are guilty.”
“How little you know me,” Clara said.
“I'm trying to protect you, Clara!”
“Protect meâby destroying me? By leaving me an empty box of a human being? Can't you see what you're asking me to do?”
“I'm asking you to be an American. Not an African or a Seneca. But an American. We can't be one people, Clara, if we divide ourselves and plan to cut each other's throats in the night.”
“As long as there's one African in slavery, we'll never be one people. Don't you understand that?”
“They'll never win freedom by destroying every white person's trust in them. Prove to the people of this city that a free African woman can denounce treachery and murder.”
“What you call treachery, they call war,” Clara said.
For a moment Clara thought Malcolm was going to weep. “I'm doing this because I love you!”
“No you don't. You love your fame, your glorious military reputation more than you love meâor anyone else. You want to be the man who uncovered this terrible conspiracy. You want the credit for it.”
She did not believe those cruel words. She saw how much they wounded him. But she did not care. She was adrift between his vision of America and those African faces in the midnight gloom of Hughson's taproom, when the candles guttered low and they blended into a black current that swept her toward some underground sea. She had lost touch with the voice that had consoled and guided her. What had happened to the woman who had sworn she would never doubt again?
Malcolm stalked out. A few days later, the governor published a proclamation offering a reward of a hundred pounds to anyone who provided information that led to the conviction of those who were guilty of starting the fires. It was a huge sum of money to an average working man or
womanâfive years' wages, at least. Any slave who came forward was offered less moneyâtwenty poundsâbut he or she would be freed.
On the following Monday, Caesar, the Hughsons, and Clara went before the grand jury, in the matter of the theft of Rebecca Hogg's goods. Peter Van Ness had agreed to defend them, along with an older and more distinguished attorney, James Alexander. The courtroom was jammed with spectators. Rumor had already connected Caesar to the fires through his friend Cuffee.
The seventeen-man grand jury was a cross section of merchants and shop owners and ship captains and clerks. Among them was Malcolm's friend Guert Cuyler, who was chosen as foreman. The first witness was Mary Burton. The moment Clara saw her, she sensed disaster. Mary was wearing her best outfit, a garish array of bright greens and blues and yellows. She obviously expected to play a starring role in this drama.
At first Mary pretended to be timid. She said she was afraid to testify about anything. The grand jurors assured her that she would be protected. Mary curled her lip, apparently unconvinced, and said: “I'll acquaint you with what I know about the goods stolen from the Hoggs'. But I'll say nothing about the fires.”
This remark caused consternation among the grand jurors and the spectators. Most of them had little or no interest in the Hogg burglary. It was a routine case, at best. But the fires had threatened all of them with destruction. They insisted on Mary telling them everything she knew. One of them warned her that if she concealed evidence, she would be guilty of a serious crime.
Mary sat up straight in the witness box, satisfied that she had put herself in a sympathetic light. “Caesar, and Mr. Philipse's Negro man, Cuffee, used to meet at my master's tavern and I heard them talk frequently of burning the fort and the whole town,” she said. “My master and my mistress were there too, and the man they called Father, the priest whose name is Ury. He sometimes baptized the Negroes that Caesar brought there and my master, John Hughson, wrote their names in a book. They said the city would burn and they would kill the white people who weren't baptized and the Spanish would send a fleet to take the place and make Caesar king and Ury the pope of the colony.”
“What about the Negro woman known as Clara Flowers? Was she involved with this plot to destroy us?” Guert Cuyler asked.
Mary stared at Clara for a long moment, no doubt balancing her many kindnesses against her frequent insistence on Mary doing her job. “No,” she said. “I never heard her say a word about it.”
“But she knew about the Hoggs' thefts and other thefts?”
“Maybe she knew of them but said nothing for fear of her life, like I
did,” Mary said. “My master has a wicked temper and often threatened to kill me in front of her and others.”
“She's been seen in Caesar's company. A neighbor told me she invited him to her house only a few days before he was arrested,” another grand juryman said.
“She served him liquor like any other customer,” Mary said. “That's all I ever saw of her knowing him.”
They put Caesar on the stand and asked him if he ever shared his loot with Clara. “I'm an innocent man,” Caesar said. “I've never stolen anything. How could I share it with anybody?”
The grand jury deliberated less than ten minutes and returned with indictments against the Hughsons and Caesar for theft and conspiracy to destroy New York. They also directed a constable to arrest John Ury on the latter charge. As for Clara Flowers, they found the evidence against her “too weak to form an indictment,” Guert Cuyler said.
A growl of disappointment rumbled through the spectators. On the bench, Judge Daniel Horsmanden called for order in his courtroom. “Far be it from me to attempt to interfere with the rights and duties of grand jurymen,” he said. “But I fear you may have made a mistake here. I've heard from numerous sources that this African creature was at the very heart of the conspiracy.”
“Not by any evidence brought here, Your Honor,” Guert Cuyler said.
Clara was free but it was all too clear that she was far from safe. As the courtroom emptied, Johannes Van Vorst and his wife rushed to the bench to confer with Judge Horsmanden. A dozen of their friends followed them.
On Maiden Lane, Clara knelt before the image of the Virgin.
What should I do, Holy Mother?
Silence. The statue's graven face seemed to mock her. Was it all a bizarre series of coincidences? Why was rain sent to rescue white New Yorkâwhile the Africans were abandoned in their torment? Did it mean that God's powerâthe Virgin's powerâwas tethered by laws beyond human comprehension?
Clara flung herself facedown on the floor.
Send me light, please!
Silence.
Adam Duycinck knocked on the door. “Catalyntie's downstairs,” he said.
Her Seneca sister was in a state of violent agitation. “I'm risking a great deal even to see you this way,” she said. “Malcolm's heard from Guert Cuyler that half the grand jury was inclined to indict you. But Guert persuaded them to be satisfied with finding the others.”
“What's your point?”
“I think you should leave New York, now.”
“Where would you have me go?”
“Philadelphia. Boston. Anyplace else. Perhaps Jamaica or one of the other sugar islands.”
“I've done nothing. I won't go,” Clara said.
“That's exactly what's wrong. You knew all about it and you did nothing.”
“If I'd done
nothing
, you'd probably be dead now. My prayers have saved you and a thousand others from slaughter. Now I wish I'd let you die. In some way I've sinned against my God! She won't speak to me!”
That was how Catalyntie Van Vorst Stapleton learned New York had been saved by a species of being as different from her as the eagle is to the fly. Her Seneca sister Clara Flowers had become a saint.
D
OWN WALL STREET TO THE BROADWAY the cart rumbled, hauled by two plodding oxen. On its swaying floor stood Caesar and Cuffee, shackled hand and foot. Around them marched a guard of twelve musketbearing militiamen under the command of Malcolm Stapleton. They were preceded by a drummer boy in a red coat. He was thumping his drum in the funereal rhythm of the dead march. At the Broadway, where Clara waited, the cart turned north. Hundreds of people lined the street and clustered at the intersection, shouting insults.
“You're going to find out what fire feels like, Negars,” one man shouted.
“Scorch them good,” screamed a woman. “Roast them fine!”
“Baste them!” cried a boy.
Up the Broadway the grim procession went to the open fields known as the Common.
52
There, a crowd of at least a thousand people had gathered. Clara was the only African in the throng. Why had she come? she wondered. To offer Caesar a hint of solace? To contemplate the fate that awaited her? To face what God in his darkness permitted in this uncompleted world, where the Evil Brother wielded so much power? Yes, all three reasons.
Around two tall stakes were piled fagots to the depth of four or five
feet. Caesar and Cuffee were dragged from the cart and hustled up to the stakes. A blacksmith quickly wrapped their shackles around the stakes and fastened them so they stood back to back while the crowd whooped and howled. Two constables piled the fagots around them while a bailiff stood ready, a burning torch in his hand.
On the testimony of Mary Burton, a jury had convicted both men of theft and conspiracy to burn the city. Either charge carried the death penalty but the second one had persuaded Judge Daniel Horsmanden to order this form of execution “to set terror an example by greater terror.”
In court, the judge had exhorted them to confess but they had remained silent. Now Horsmanden waded through the fagots to give them one more chance. “Will you tell us the names of your fellow conspirators?” he cried. “A thorough confession can still save your lives!”
Caesar stared at the sea of white faces and said nothing. Cuffee was trembling so violently his chains rattled. Sweat poured from his cheeks and chin. “I'll tell,” he said. “I'll admit everything. We burned the fort and my master's warehouse and all the other buildings. It was Caesar's plan. Caesar and Hughson and Ury.”
“Who else?” Horsmanden said. Beside him a court secretary was scribbling down every word.
“Quaco and Prince and Sawney and Peterâ”
He reeled off a list of almost twenty fellow Africans. Horsmanden thrashed through the fagots to face Caesar. “Is this true? Do you also admit your guilt and the guilt of these others?”
Caesar said nothing. “Speak!” Horsmanden said. “Is Cuffee telling the truth?”
“He's a damned liar.”
Horsmanden thrashed back through the fagots to Cuffee. “What about the woman Clara Flowers? Was she in the conspiracy as well?”
“Yes! Yes!” Cuffee said. “She knew all. She advised us with her book of maps how to bring a Spanish fleet from Cuba! Antonio and the other Spanish fellows told us they'd come.”
“He's a goddamned liar,” Caesar said.
Horsmanden climbed out of the fagots and told the court secretary to hurry to the home of John Murray on lower Broadway, where the governor was living, and ask him for a stay of execution for Cuffee. The secretary, a fat Dutchman, went puffing off on this errand. The crowd grew impatient. They surged almost to the edge of the fagots shouting: “Burn them, damn you. Are you going to let them go to tell more lies?”
Malcolm and his militiamen, assisted by a few constables with truncheons, shoved the crowd back. But Sheriff Jeremiah Tompkins was not happy. He began berating Judge Horsmanden. “Do you want to get us
all killed?” he said. “These people mean to have a show or else. If you reprieve either one of these fellows, we'll have a riot.”
“Light the fire!” roared the crowd. “Torch the Negars!”
“You won't get him back to jail without a guard of two hundred men,” the sheriff said. “And where the devil do you expect us to find them?”
“Torch them!” screamed the crowd.
Horsmanden sighed. “Oh very well. Let the business begin. We've got a good list of names from him.”
The sheriff gestured to the bailiff with the torch. He threw it into the pile of fagots and the flames leaped around Caesar and Cuffee. “No, no, I'll tell you more!” Cuffee screamed. “I'll tell you all the names!”
Judge Horsmanden did not even turn his head. The crowd howled its approval. The flames swirled around Caesar until his hair burned like crepe paper. He never made a sound. Cuffee made enough noise for both of them. His screams rose above the mob's howl for at least ten minutes. Abruptly the cries vanished and through the air drifted the stench of burned flesh.
Clara retreated to Maiden Lane, trembling and nauseated. Seizing a hammer, she rushed upstairs and flung the statue of the Virgin on the hardwood floor. With three savage strokes she smashed it into a hundred pieces. An hour later, constables were at her door to arrest her. She and all the slaves Cuffee had named swiftly joined the Hughsons and John Ury in the foul cells under the City Hall.
After a night of misery, she was led to Daniel Horsmanden's chambers for questioning. The judge was in an exultant mood. He told Clara he remembered the day he freed her. “I said then you'd cause nothing but trouble and I was right. You have only one hope of saving yourself. Name all the others, especially the white people in this vicious conspiracy. It's beyond the capacity of you Africans.”
Poor Caesar, Clara thought. Deprived of even the credit for creating the plot. “In fact, Your Honor,” she said. “Caesar first broached the plan to me ten years ago, when I had the misfortune to spend a night in one of the cells downstairs with him.”
“Why did he tell you? Was he hoping to involve the Indians in it?”
“He never mentioned them. He thought he and his fellow slaves could do it all themselves.”
“We think you and your friend Catalyntie Stapleton have never surrendered your loyalty to the Senecas. Tell us how she gave you the money to run Hughson's as the headquarters for the plot. If you name her, I guarantee I can get you a pardon.”
“The same kind that you guaranteed Cuffee?” Clara said.
Malcolm visited Clara in her cell that afternoon. “Peter Van Ness has
resigned from your case. There isn't a lawyer in the city who'll defend you or any of these people. They say their reputations will be ruined forever. They'll never be able to make another shilling here.”
“Forget me. I'm going to die,” Clara said. “I'm perfectly resigned.”
“You're not going to die,” Malcolm said. “We'll find a lawyer for you in another colonyâPennsylvania, New Jersey.”
The Hughsons went on trial first. They were convicted and Clara spent nightmarish days and nights listening to their sobs and groans as their execution day approached. John Hughson discovered prayer and one night he had a vision of an angel descending to rescue them from the hangman's cart. Perhaps it was God's way of sustaining him. If so, his wife Sarah was not convinced. She cursed God and John Ury, blaming the priest for their fate.
Ury spent his time preparing a speech he planned to give from the gallows. He had no hope of evading deathâthough he intended to try. He said God expected everyone to do his utmost to sustain life. At his trial, the jury debated less than ten minutes before bringing in a guilty verdict.
That night, Ury rehearsed his speech for Clara. Like the Hughsons, he repeatedly insisted he was innocent of any connection with the plotâa strange avoidance of the truth. Only one line in the speech rang true: “This is one of the dark providences of the Great God in his wise, just and good government of this lower earth.”
The more Clara thought of the Great God, the darker and more impenetrable He became. He was certainly not the Master of Life, the benevolent creator of the forests and the rivers and the lakes of her girlhood. He was also not the Evil Brother, who so easily triumphed over the Master of Life when they contested for supremacy in the wilderness of the human heart. The Great God transcended both these beings in a gloomy immensity shot through with only glimpses of light and hope.
First the Hughsons and then Ury went to the gallows on the edge of the Common. Among the Africans, a steady stream went to the same place; others such as Antonio and several of his fellow Spanish slaves went to the stake. Judge Horsmanden sentenced almost all those accused by Cuffee or by Mary Burton of having an active part in the conspiracy to that fiery fate. Each prisoner received a jury trial but it was little more than a formality. Jurors barely left the box before they were back with guilty verdicts.
Three times, while this grisly process ground out death, Clara was brought to Judge Horsmanden's chambers for another interrogation. Each time she was guaranteed a reprieve if she would name Catalyntie Stapleton as a conspirator. The hatred Catalyntie had inspired in her uncle,
Johannes Van Vorst, was bearing terrible fruit. Of course Clara remained silent each time, in spite of being threatened with death at the stake.
Â
One night in July, almost five months after the fire in Fort George, Mary Burton visited me and Malcolm. She was a celebrity, feasted and petted by Johannes Van Vorst and Judge Horsmanden and their friends. But they declined to pay her the hundred pounds she thought was due her for revealing the conspirators. They accused her of sheltering Clara and meâ“the Indians”âas many people in New York now called us.
Mary plaintively described how hard she was resisting their pressure. But they had the power to refuse her the hundred pounds if Horsmanden, in his capacity as trial judge and chief investigator of the conspiracy, ruled that she was not completely “forthcoming.” Never in her life would she be so close to that much money. What was a poor girl to do? Mary sobbed.
“Tell the truth,” Malcolm said.
“How much do you want?” I said.
“To save your friendâthe least I can expect is a hundred and fifty pounds,” Mary said. “If I save her I'll save you too.”
Mary was a slattern but she was not a fool. Malcolm Stapleton paced the floor in agony. Finally he made up his mindâand said what I feared he would say.
“Get out of here. We've got a good lawyer coming from Pennsylvania to defend Clara. I'll testify in court that you tried to solicit a bribe. That will prove your word is worth nothing.”
“Nothing is what your word will be worthâagainst mine,” Mary said and flounced out of the house.
I struggled for calm. There was no point in berating Malcolm. “I think we should give her the money,” I said.
“No!”
“What does it matter, whether she lies for us or the other side? It's all lies. When are you going to quit your dream of an honest government? It doesn't exist and never willâin America or England or anywhere else.”
“It will,” Malcolm said. “Clara gave me that dream. I won't let you dirty it again.”
The next day, Judge Horsmanden announced that Clara's trial was set for the following day. Malcolm asked for a week's delay to bring their attorney from Philadelphia. Horsmanden blandly denied the request. “There are plenty of good lawyers in this province you can hire in an hour,” the judge said.
When Malcolm told him he had tried in vain to hire one of these good lawyers, Horsmanden said the refusal spoke for itself. No one in New York had any doubt of Clara's guilt. Besides Cuffee, a dozen other Africans,
in desperate attempts to save their lives, had named her as a conspirator at Hughson's.
That night, without consulting Malcolm, I sent Adam Duycinck to the Fighting Cock, the inn where Mary Burton was living. I armed him with a hundred and fifty pounds and the promise of another fifty pounds when and if Mary left New York to take up permanent residence elsewhere. The next day in court, she astounded Horsmanden by again denying that Clara was a conspirator.
But the judge was not so easily defeated. He paraded a dozen men to the witness box, some of them the court secretaries who had taken confessions from Cuffee and other Africans, others prisoners from the cells below the courtroom, ready to say anything to save their lives. Clara made no attempt to challenge any of this testimony.
The jury found her guilty. A delighted Horsmanden declared they had convicted the “secret chief” of the conspiracy. It only remained to root out her white confederate. “It is patently impossible for anyone of African blood to have conceived so clever a scheme,” he declared. “We have already rooted out the white papist side of the conspiracy. Only the white Indian side remains.”
He sentenced Clara to be burned at the stake the following day. The crowded courtroom cheered. When Malcolm and I left City Hall, we were pelted with insults. Back in our house on Depeyster Street, Malcolm slumped disconsolately in a chair. I paced the floor.