e of knowledge in the premises. See also the contemporary letters of
Lieutenant-Governor Clarke in E.B. O'Callaghan, ed., _Documents Relative to
the Colonial History of New York_, VI, 186, 197, 198, 201-203.]

[Footnote 49: _Ibid_., pp. 96-100.]

[Footnote 50: _Ibid_., pp. 370-372.]

In New Jersey in 1734 a slave at Raritan when jailed for drunkenness and
insolence professed to reveal a plot for insurrection, whereupon he and
a fellow slave were capitally convicted. One of them escaped before
execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a
negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt
and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration.
Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release
them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the
restoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were punished for arson.[52]

[Footnote 51: MS. transcript in the New York Public Library from the New
York _Gazette_, Mch. 18, 1734.]

[Footnote 52: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.]

In the Southern colonies there were no outbreaks in the seventeenth century
and but two discoveries of plots, it seems, both in Virginia. The first
of these, 1663, in which indented white servants and negro slaves in
Gloucester County were said to be jointly involved, was betrayed by one of
the servants. The colonial assembly showed its gratification not only by
freeing the informer and giving him five thousand pounds of tobacco but by
resolving in commemoration of "so transcendant a favour as the preserving
all we have from so utter ruin," "that the 13th. of September be annually
kept holy, being the day those villains intended to put the plot in
execution."[53] The other plot, of slaves alone, in the "Northern Neck" of
the colony in 1687, appears to have been of no more than local concern.[54]
The punishments meted out on either occasion are unknown.

[Footnote 53: Hening, _Virginia Statutes at Large_, II, 204.]

[Footnote 54: J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore,
1902), p. 79.]

The eighteenth century, with its multiplication of slaves, saw somewhat
more frequent plots in its early decades. The discovery of one in Isle of
Wight County, Virginia, in 1709 brought thirty-nine lashes to each of
three slaves and fifty lashes to a free negro found to be cognizant, and
presumably more drastic pu