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kindled by wicked People.” Rumors of a slave uprising swept the city, fueled by allegations that black people had been overheard cursing the white inhabitants. “The chief talk now in Town is about the Negroes conspiracy,” Elizabeth DeLancey reported to her father, Cadwallader Colden. The lord of Coldengham also received a letter from an anonymous source in Massachusetts warning that New York was repeating the New England tragedy of 1692 when Puritans hustled innocent women to their deaths during a wave of hysteria over witchcraft. “I intreat you not to go on to Massacre & destroy your own Estates by making Bonfires of the Negros,” the author pleaded, “& perhaps thereby loading yourselves with greater Guilt than theirs.” 21
    As white residents’ anxieties about a general slave uprising peaked, the city’s traders were completing several slaving ventures. As the Africans were allegedly conspiring, John Walter and Arnot Schuyler—who had hired Captain Farmar—brought the
Arent
into port. Peter Van Brugh Livingston’s sloop
Sea Nymph
approached Manhattan, having already stopped in South Carolina, just as New York’s white population was beginning to panic. On Saturday, April 11, Mayor John Cruger summoned the Common Council to investigate the fires and rumors, approve rewards for any white persons providing evidence of arson or conspiracy, grant freedom and cash to any slaves who brought such evidence (a provision that also compensated their owners), and pay any free black person, mulatto, or Indian coming forward with information. Thefollowing week, a ship from St. Christopher came into port with slaves for the merchants Edward Little, William Craft, and Nathaniel Marston. 22
    On April 21 the New York Supreme Court of Judicature summoned a grand jury, comprising seventeen merchants—including several men who soon became founders, trustees, and patrons of the colleges in New York and New Jersey—to examine evidence and testimony taken during the past weeks. Officials interrogated and arrested Africans belonging to the colony’s most prominent families: Jay, Van Horne, Philipse, Gomez, Cruger, Clarkson, Rutgers, Schuyler, Duane, DePeyster, Bayard, Roosevelt, Van Cortlandt, and Livingston. Elizabeth DeLancey later alerted her father of the conviction of Philipse and Roosevelt slaves. Othello (DeLancey) was hanged on July 18 for enlisting others in the plot and acting as captain of one branch of the scheme. That same week, newspapers excoriated the boldness of several black men and an Indian at their executions: “On Saturday last five lusty jolly Negros and one Spanish Indian were hang’d on account of the said Plot, and one pretended Negro Doctor was burnt. One of those that were hang’d behaved with such unparalel’d Impenitence and Impudence as greatly to amaze the Spectators.” 23
    In the backdrop of the furor, vessels carrying enslaved Africans streamed into New York’s harbor. Between the jury’s April 21 impaneling and the end of the trials on August 29, at least twenty slaving vessels docked in New York. Philip Livingston, Philip Van Cortlandt, Stephen Bayard, David Gomez, Peter Van Brugh Livingston, and Mordecai Nunez dominated that summer’s commerce. Merchants also testified during the trials, but the threats to the colony did little to reshape their decisions. Peter Van Brugh Livingston even used a technicality to avoid service. 24
    White New Yorkers gained some solace from the sight of slaves being tried before a jury of masters. The people had been subjected to “many frights and terrors,” Justice Frederick Philipse reminded the jury. Justice Philipse tried dozens of enslaved people, including Cuffee (Philipse), who was accused of setting fire to a storehouse belonging to the judge’s uncle and boasting that he was going to free the family of its fortune. Cuffee was also part of a group ofblack men who