The Negro girl Sarah, referred to above, who was before the jury on the 1st of June in such a terrified state of body and mind, was re-called on the 5th of June.  She implicated twenty Negroes, whom she declared were present at the house of Comfort, whetting their knives, and avowing that “they would kill white people.”  On the 6th of June, Robin, Caesar, Cook, Cuffee, and Jack, another Cuffee, and Jamaica were arrested, and put upon trial on the 8th of June.  It is a sad fact to record, even at this distance, that these poor blacks, without counsel, friends, or money, were tried and convicted upon the evidence of a poor ignorant, hysterical girl, and the “dying confession” of Quack and Cuffee, who “confessed” with the understanding that they should be free!  Tried and found guilty on the 8th, without clergy or time to pray, they were burned at the stake the next day!  Only Jack found favor with the court, and that favor was purchased by perjury.  He was respited until it “was found how well he would deserve further favor.”  It was next to impossible to understand him, so two white gentlemen were secured to act as interpreters.  Jack testified to having seen Negroes at Hughson’s tavern; that “when they were eating, he said they began to talk about setting the houses on fire:”  he was so good as to give the names of about fourteen Negroes whom he heard say that they would set their masters’ houses on fire, and then rush upon the whites and kill them; that at one of these meetings there were five or six Spanish Negroes present, whose conversation he could not understand; that they waited a month and a half for the Spaniards and French to come, but when they came not, set fire to the fort.  As usual, more victims of these confessors swelled the number already in the jail; which was, at this time, full to suffocation.

On the 19th of June the lieutenant-governor issued a proclamation of freedom to all who would “confess and discover” before the 1st of July.  Several Indians were in the prison, charged with conspiracy.  The confessions and discoveries were numerous.  Every Negro charged with being an accomplice of the unfortunate wretches that had already perished at the stake began to accuse some one else of complicity in the plot.  They all knew of many Negroes who were going to cut the white people’s throats with penknives; and when the town was in flames they were to “meet at the end of Broadway, next to the fields!” And it must be recorded, to the everlasting disgrace of the judiciary of New York, that scores of ignorant, helpless, and innocent Negroes—­and a few white people too—­were convicted upon the confessions of the terror-stricken witnesses!  There is not a court to-day in all enlightened Christendom that would accept as evidence—­not even circumstantial—­the incoherent utterances of these Negro “confessors.”  And yet an intelligent (?) New-York court thought the evidence “clear (?), and satisfactory!”