Ben Hughes - When I Die, I Shall Return to My Own Land: The New York City Slave Revolt of 1712

ALSO BY THE BEN HUGHES

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A Year on the Northeastern Frontier

The Pursuit of the Essex:
Heroism and Hubris on the High Seas in the War of 1812

The British Invasion of the River Plate, 18061807:
How the Redcoats were Humbled and a Nation was Born

Conquer or Die!
Wellingtons Veterans and the Liberation of the New World

They Shall Not Pass! The British Battalion at Jarama

When I Die, I Shall Return to My Own Land

THE NEW YORK CITY SLAVE REVOLT OF 1712

BEN HUGHES

WESTHOLME
Yardley

2021 Ben Hughes
Maps by Tracy Dungan
Maps 2021 Westholme Publishing

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Westholme Publishing, LLC
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ISBN: 978-1-59416-672-3
Also available in cloth.

T his slave trade and slavery spread more human misery, inculcated more disrespect for and neglect of humanity, a greater callousness to suffering, and more petty, cruel, human hatred than can well be calculated. We may excuse and palliate it, and write history so as to let men forget it; it remains the most inexcusable and despicable blot on modern human history.

W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro (1915)

O nym krabea nni kwatibea.

The destiny the Supreme Being has assigned to you cannot be avoided.

Akan proverb

Contents

Illustrations

MAPS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Preface

IN SEARCH OF SILENT PROTAGONISTS

As historians, we cannot work with Euclidean standards of proof. We are obliged to interpret; to speculate not wildly but in an informed way.

Ivor Wilks, Forests of Gold (1993)

kwantenni nim asmka, na onnim asekyer.

Telling what you have seen on your journey is one thing, explaining it is another.

Akan proverb

W HEN I DIE, I SHALL RETURN TO MY OWN LAND are words attributed to an eighteenth-century Akan runaway on the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas. When faced with execution he embraced what he believed to be his proximate homecoming to asamando , the place where the ancestors dwell.

Three separate sources link the Akan to the New York Slave Revolt of 1712. The first, written one day after the revolt for the Boston News-Letter , states that some Cormentine Negroes to the number of 25 or 30 and 2 or 3 Spanish Indians having conspirred to murder all the Christians here, and by that means thinking to obtain their Freedom, about two oclock this morning put their bloody design in Execution.

The third source linking the Akan to the revolt are the minutes of New Yorks Supreme Court of Judicature which name all the individuals put on trial. Although the names given to enslaved people often reveal more about the whims of their masters than they do about those who carried them, they can also provide clues as to the identity of the individual. This is particularly true when it comes to the Akan, who were typically named for the day of the week on which they were born. Of the forty-seven slaves indicted in the trials that took place from April 12 to October 18, 1712, nine, or 19 percent, had Akan day names. This correlation rises to four out of nineteen, or 21 percent if we reduce the base group to include only those executed for the crime, or five out of twenty (25 percent) if we add Peter the Doctor, who,

Which leaves Claus. The only slave to be executed by being broken on the wheel, Claus belonged to Alan Jarrett, New York Citys most prolific slave trader.

The name of Jarretts executed slave may also be significant. In 1712 New York had a diverse population. Roughly half of the free residents

At the time of Jarretts presence on the Gold Coast prior to his return to New York in June 1711, the Danish proprietors of Christiansborg were experiencing a boom in business. This was attributable to the actions of a particular Akan polity, the Akwamu, a bellicose people originating in the foliage entombed interior known for their devotion to the god of war, Tutu Abo. A few months prior to Jarretts visit, the ruler of Akwamu, King Akwonno, had defeated the neighboring polity of Kwahu, a people known for their expertise at elephant hunting and their exportation of ivory and gold, after a series of campaigns which had occupied his army for the previous four years. Could it be then that the enslaved people responsible for the New York revolt of 1712 were originally from the Akan polity of Kwahu?

A New and Exact Map of Guinea Divided into the Gold, Slave and Ivory Coast & with their several kingdoms, and the adjacent Countries , 1705. European slave castles crowd the coastline. ( New York Public Library )

As is already no doubt evident, When I Die, I Shall Return to My Own Land involves a certain amount of speculation. Perhaps, maybe, and may well have been litter the pages that follow. This approach is often forced upon the writers of histories of enslaved people. As others have noted, the problem is the paucity of sources. sources relating to situations that parallel the 1712 revolt cast light on the events surrounding that April night. Although little evidence survives detailing Jarretts voyage to the Gold Coast, for example, many primary accounts exist pertaining to contemporary voyages with the same purpose and similar destinations. In the same vein, although the surviving documentation concerning the revolt of 1712 is slight, that which relates to the alleged New York revolt of 1741 is considerable, as is the evidence detailing an Akan-led revolt that took place on the Caribbean island of Saint John in 1733, and an Akan/Creole plot discovered before it could be carried out in Antigua in 1736. Although the two New York-based events were very different, the records from 1741 can teach us much about the day-to-day lives of those involved in 1712, as well as about what their white owners considered plausible behavior for the enslaved. Furthermore, the similarities between 1733 and 1712 are striking, the court records from the 1736 plot also provide considerable insight. The use of such devices may not be ideal, but the alternative is even less desirable. Even though the paucity of primary evidence forces unorthodox methods, the story of the 1712 New York rebels deserves to be told.

Prologue

NEW YORK CITYS EAST WARD, 2 A.M., APRIL 7, 1712