Lothrop Stoddard, _The French Revolution in San Domingo_
(Boston, 1914).]
In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of 1712
and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy of
the public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had been
recurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a mission
school by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroes
who had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable;
and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indians
or mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as they
contended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-three
provided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose the
dark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afire
and slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfire
caused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speed
that only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when the
plotters were routed.
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