1712 SLAVE REVOLT IN NEW YORK CITY

Man's crimes against his fellow man are historical and never ending. Death and torture are intrinsic to man's nature. Always with us.

 

One example is a 1712 slave revolt which occurred in New York City.

 

Note that as of 1712, New York City was not a part of what would ultimately become the United States. There was no United States. There would be no United States for at least another fifty years. A United States free of English rule was not even a thought in anyone's mind.

 

New York City was a thriving community by 1712. Under English rule, it prospered. A huge population. Many African natives and descendants were a part of the population. Some free men, some slaves. One out of every five persons making up New York's population in 1712 was a slave. A significant number.

 

The Africans lived in close quarters. They were able to communicate easily. Eventually they conspired.

 

On the evening of April 6, 1712, a group of slaves held a midnight tavern meeting. They were tired of being used and abused by the white population. They were constantly maltreated. The meeting resulted in a decision to revolt. Some seventy slaves were involved. Their express purpose in revolting was to arouse the rest of New York's
African population to join them. To do what? To incite their African brothers and sisters to join them in massacring all white people. A major undertaking. A plan fraught with danger to both blacks and whites..

 

The revolt began. The slaves were armed with guns, hatchets and swords.Twenty three slaves started a fire to a home on Maiden Lane. Today a part of New York's financial district. Whites tried to stop the fire. Other whites, primarily slaveholders, ran out of their homes to protect their homes from additional fires.

 

A battle ensued between the slaves and whites. Nine whites were killed.

 

Seventy blacks were arrested and jailed. Twenty seven tried. Twenty one convicted and executed.

 

The thrust of today's column is the method of execution.

 

Twenty African men were burned at the stake. One was executed by being tied to a wheel which separated the bones in his body. Arms and legs from the torso. Internal organs from each other.

 

Each African man was conscious at the start of his execution and throughout a part of each.

 

Burning at the stake  had been a popular European method of punishment/execution. Reference Joan of Arc and the Spanish Inquisition, for example. However the white people of New York had long before 1712 done away with burning for execution purposes. They preferred the more charitable hanging.

 

Why then were the Africans burned at the stake? The whites were in such fear of a black insurrection that in the end the form of the punishment was out of proportion to the crimes committed.

 

Teach the blacks a lesson they will never forget was the cry of the whites!

 

Burning had become increasing less used into the 1600s. This made the New York City slave revolt punishment even more horrendous in the early 1700s.

 

The last Englishman living in England to have been burned at the stake was Edward Wightman in 1612. For heresy.

 

Hanging was considered more charitable. Henry VIII's wives who were killed were initially sentenced to death by burning. Their crimes were allegedly treason which was punishable by burning. Henry was a softy. He did not want his former wives to suffer. He reduced their method of execution from burning to hanging.

 

Historically women were treated with sensitivity when they were to be executed. To reduce a woman's pain factor dramatically, she was first hung till dead and then burned.

 

Those of the Muslim faith do not execute solely by stoning. They too burn at the stake. In 2006 in one Iraqi city, Sulaymaniyah, 400 women were executed by burning. The thought occurs: Where was the American influence?

 

1712 New York City is a shame on our English forebeareers. It is a shame on the white slave owners who feared their homes and lives would be lost.

 

Societies and religions world wide continue to look with favor upon burning while alive as an appropriate means for execution. Pain before death. Burned alive.
Ghoulish.

 

Man is not beyond such cruelty. History is repeating itself. Twenty first century man in various parts of the globe is still resorting to the tried and true method for painful execution. Burning at the stake.