In April of 1712, twenty-three enslaved people initiated a revolt against the white enslaver population of New York City. They started a fire as a diversion, then attacked the responding crowd with guns and hatchets, killing eight and wounding seven. In retaliation, seventy black people were arrested, twenty-seven put on trial and twenty-one executed. 

Over the course of the early 18th century, the rights of both free and enslaved black people in New York were gradually constricted, changing the rights granted by the Dutch colonial authority. New York had one of the largest enslaved populations of any English colony, with the white, free, and enslaved communities living in close and intimate proximity. Under Dutch control, there was more freedom of movement and opportunities for land ownership and eventual manumission, however, the English colonial government imposed increasingly restrictive laws on the black population. The slave trade’s centrality to the city’s economy grew as well, with the first market established in late 1711, just five months before the attempted revolt. 

Of the seventy men and women arrested in the aftermath of the uprising,  six committed suicide, twenty-seven put on trial, and twenty-one, including one pregnant woman, put to death by public burning or hanging. Restrictions on the black community intensified further, and the Governor of New York imposed a tax of £200 on each person freed from 1715 onwards. The swift retaliation by white slave-holding New Yorkers failed to successfully quell resistance, and the city experienced another uprising of black and impoverished white residents in the Conspiracy of 1741.

Sources

Smithsonian Magazine. “The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 Was a Bloody Prelude to Decades of Hardship.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-york-slave-revolt-1712-was-bloody-prelude-decades-hardship-180958665/. 

Wikipedia. “New York Slave Revolt of 1712.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Slave_Revolt_of_1712. 

Wikipedia. “New York Conspiracy of 1741.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Conspiracy_of_1741.

Further Resources

Hughes, Ben. When I Die I Shall Return to My Own Land: The New York Slave Revolt of 1712. Westholme Publishing, 2021. 

Hughes, Ben. The New York City Slave Revolt of 1712: The First Enslaved Insurrection in British North America. Westholme Publishing, 2024. 

Foote, Thelma Wills. Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 

Lepore, Jill. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.