always suffered, many dying by the
fagot or the gallows."

In the year 1741, a terrible panic agitated the whole city in
apprehension of an insurrection of the slaves. The most cruel laws had
been passed to hold them firmly in bondage. The city then contained
ten thousand inhabitants, two thousand of whom were slaves. If three
of these, "black seed of Cain," were found together, they were liable
to be punished by forty lashes on the bare back. The same punishment
was inflicted upon a slave found walking with a club, outside of his
master's grounds without a permit. Two justices could inflict any
punishment, except amputation or death, upon any slave who should make
an assault upon a Christian or a Jew.

A calaboose or jail for slaves stood on the Park Common. Many of the
leading merchants in New York were engaged in the slave trade. Several
fires had taken place, which led to the suspicion that the slaves had
formed a plot to burn the city and massacre the inhabitants. The panic
was such that the community seemed bereft of reason. A poor, weak,
half-crazed servant-girl, Mary Burton, in a sailor's boarding house,
testified, after much importunity, that she had overheard some negroes
conferring respecting setting the town on fire.

At first she confined her accusations to the blacks. Then she began to
criminate white people, bringing charges against her landlord, his
wife and other white persons in the household. In a History of this
strange affair written at the time, by Daniel Horsmanden, one of the
Justices of the Supreme Court, we read,

"The whole summer was spent in the prosecutions. A
coincidence of slight circumstances was magnified, by the
general terror, into violent presumptions. Tales collected
without doors, mingling with the proofs given at the bar,
poisoned the minds of the jurors, and this sanguinary spirit
of the day suffered no check until Mary, the capital
informer, bewildered by the frequent examinations and
suggestions, began to touch characters which malice itself
dare not suspect."

During this period of almost insane excitement, thirteen negroes were
burned at the stake, eighteen were hanged, and seventy transported.

I cannot conclude this treatise upon the olden time better than by
quoting the eloquent words of Mr. Kip:

"The dress, which had for generations been the sign and
symbol of a gentleman, gradually waned away, till soc