American slavery was always marked by violence, most of it by masters against slaves. Slaves also used violence, ranging from full-scale revolts to individual breaks for freedom, but compared to some other slave societies, slave-initiated violence was relatively slight, in part because whites were so quick to put down real or imagined threats with extraordinary and intimidating violence, formal or informal, legal or illegal. In the eighteenth century, suppression of rebellious blacks was harsh in the extreme.
An example of violence on the part of both slaves and masters is the revolt of 1712 in New York City. A number of blacks, along with some Indians, planned to revolt against their enslavement. They bound themselves to secrecy with a blood oath and rubbed their bodies with a supposedly invulnerable powder given them by a free black “sorcerer.” On the night of April 6, they set fire to the outhouse of their masters, and lay in ambush to slay those who came to put the fire out. They managed to kill nine whites and wound others before the Governor sent troops to end the revolt. The slaves fled, but most were captured, and several committed suicide rather than be taken. After a trial, twenty-four were sentenced to death, but the Governor reprieved six. Of the remaining eighteen who were tried, some were hanged, some were tortured, some burned to death. One sentence read that the rebel was to be “burned with a slow fire that he may continue in torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in the said fire until he be dead and consumed to ashes.” In 1741 thirteen blacks were sentenced to be burned to death when an alleged slave conspiracy was reported.
The following account is taken from a letter by Governor Robert Hunter to the Lords of Trade, June 23, 1712, in E. B. O’Callaghan, ed.: Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York (1855), V, 341. See Kenneth Scott: “The Slave Insurrection in New York in 1712,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, XLV (January 1961), 43–74; T. Wood Clarke: “The Negro Plot of 1741,” New York History, XXV (April 1944), 167–81; and Winthrop D. Jordan: White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (1968).
I must now give your Lordships an account of a bloody conspiracy of some of the slaves of this place, to destroy as many of the inhabitants as they could. It was put in execution in this manner, when they had resolved to revenge themselves, for some hard usage, they apprehended to have received from their masters (for I can find no other cause) they agreed to meet in the orchard of Mr. Crook in the middle of the town, some provided with fire arms, some with swords and others with knives and hatchets. This was the sixth day of April, the time of meeting was about twelve or one o’clock in the night, when about three and twenty of them were got together. One coffee and negroe slave to one Vantilburgh set fire to an out house of his masters, and then repairing to his place where the rest were they all sallyed out together with their arms and marched to the fire. By this time the noise of fire spreading through the town, the people began to flock to it. Upon the approach of several the slaves fired and killed them. The noise of the guns gave the alarm, and some escaping their shot soon published the cause of the fire, which was the reason that not above nine Christians were killed, and about five or six wounded. Upon the first notice which was very soon after the mischief was begun, I order’d a detachment from the fort under a proper officer to march against them, but the slaves made their retreat into the woods, by the favour of the night. Having ordered sentries the next day in the most proper places on the Island to prevent their escape, I caused the day following the militia of this town and of the county of West Chester to drive [to] the Island, and by this means and strict searches in the town, we found all that put the design in execution. Six of these having first laid violent hands upon themselves, the rest were forthwith brought to their tryal before the Justices of this place, who are authorized by Act of Assembly to hold a court in such cases. In that court were twenty-seven condemned, whereof twenty-one were executed, one being a woman with child, her execution by that means suspended. Some were burnt, others hanged, one broke on the wheel, and one hung alive in chains in the town, so that there has been the most exemplary punishment inflicted that could be possibly thought of.