Skip to content

Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:13:Some Irish, the rest Angolan... (Alan Sinder)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

The inspiration for Hector Heathcote?

Stephensonia

A travel tired Enoch Root arrives in New York in time for a slave revolt. Some of the slaves were Irish, the rest Angolan — A global famine had started in 1707, forcing many luckless Irish into a life of slavery. One must think the decision of the Pennsylvania Assembly must have terrified many. Daniel Waterhouse also notes the rowing dirge of the slaves on the pilot boat contains Irish elements to it. Suspect the Barkers caused this New York city riot.

Authored entries

Events Leading to the Slave Revolt

Wikipedia and other sources

  • Apr 7, 1712 - There was a slave revolt in New York City. A slave insurrection in New York City was suppressed by the militia and ended with the execution of 21 blacks.
  • Jun 7, 1712 - The Pennsylvania Assembly banned the importation of slaves.
  • Jul 4, 1712 - Twelve slaves were executed for starting a slave uprising in New York that killed nine whites.
  • Apr 11, 1713 - The Peace of Utrecht was signed, France ceded Maritime provinces to Britain. The French colony of Acadia, now Nova Scotia, was ceded to Great Britain. Spain ceded Gibralter in perpetuity to Britain under the Treaties of Utrecht. Britain controls the slave trade.

SlaveMW.jpg
Angolan Slaves
Blacks Selling Blacks

Numerous slave rebellions, revolts, and insurrections took place in North America during the 18th and 19th centuries. There is documentary evidence of more than 250 uprisings or attempted uprisings involving ten or more slaves. Enoch's New York adventure sounds bigger than ten slaves running amuck, so there must have been other factors such as bread shortages, anti-war sentiment, and the like. There is a tremendous movement of people happening. Some people offer free labor as slaves, identured servants, or tranportees. Famine is sweeping Europe, lands are being confiscated. Populations are on the move, The weather is bad at the the height of a Little Ice Age. Slavery in the Americas during the 17th century was an institution that made little distinction as to the race of the slave or the free man. The Acadians had come from western France to fish and farm. Those who would not swear allegiance to the crown were deported. Many of these deportees went to the bayou country of Louisiana.

“...New England slaves numbered only about 1,000 in 1708, but that rose to more than 5,000 in 1730 and about 13,000 by 1750. New England also was the center of the slave trade in the colonies, supplying captive Africans to the South and the Caribbean island. Black slaves were a valuable shipping commodity that soon proved useful at home, both in large-scale agriculture and in ship-building. The Mid-Atlantic colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) had been under Dutch rule before the British conquered them in 1664. African slavery in the middle colonies had been actively encouraged by the Dutch authorities, and this was continued by the British. ...”[1]

Dragging out Queen Anne's War was a political ploy by Hanoverians, which killed the hopes of Jacobean rule.

Slavery in North America

Slavery in Colonial British America was introduced in imitation of labor practices used by the Spanish and Portuguese in their South American colonies. The first slaves brought to the English colonies on the continent were landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. It is unclear if they were outright slaves or indentured servants. By the 1670s slave codes enacted by individual colonies made slavery a legal, racially based institution throughout the American Colonies. Slavery in the United States ended irregularly. Slavery was legal in most of the 13 colonies, and was ended in many of the states later called "Free States" only after the turn of the 19th century. For instance, slavery was not abolished in New York state until 1827, and even then only absolutely abolished for those born before 1799. Those born between 1799 and the passage of the law were under conditional slavery. Slavery under European rule began with importation of white European slaves (or indentured servants), was followed by the enslavement of local aborigines in the Caribbean, and eventually was primarily replaced with Africans imported through a large slave trade as the native populations declined through disease. Most slaves brought to the Americas ended up in the Caribbean or South America where tropical diseases took a large toll on their population and required large numbers of replacements.

Penal Colonies

Colonies have long provided a convenient destination for surplus populations: landless younger sons (who go "out into the wide world to seek their fortunes"), "ne'er-do-wells" (idle, irresponsible persons) and remittance men (people who received a scheduled remittance or allowance from their families, often made in order to keep them away from their original country because they seemed embarrassingly eccentric and could cause problems for their family). But for states with vast empires, colonies also provide a cheap way of getting rid of convicted prisoners and exiling political dissidents: sending them sufficiently far away to discourage escape (or even return after sentence-expiry), and to places otherwise inhospitable where their (unpaid) labor can redound to the metropole's advantage before later bulk "free" immigration becomes viable. In this way governments may achieve fantasies of penology like "locking them up and throwing away the key".

Thus Great Britain once recycled its petty criminals by shipping them to North America as indentured labor. When that avenue closed in the 1780s after the American Revolution, Britain switched the destination to what later became parts of Australia: Norfolk Island, Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales. Awkward advocates of Irish Home Rule or of Trade Unionism (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) received sentences of transportation and joined the thieves and embezzlers and prostitutes in remote Australian colonies.

Sentence of Transportation

A sentence of transportation could apply for "life" or for a specific period of time. The penal system expected convicts to work, either in institutions or sub-contracted to individual entrepreneurs in penal servitude.

A "transport" who had served part of his "time" might gain a ticket of leave permitting some prescribed freedoms. But exile remained an important component of the punishment. At one time, returning from transportation was a hanging offence.

Transportation punished both major and petty crimes in Britain from the 17th century until well into the 19th century. The British colonies in North America received transported British criminals in the 17th and 18th centuries; Australia served as a standard destination of transportation for a period starting in 1788.

Caleb Heathcote Colonial Mayor of New York

CalebHeathcoteMW.jpg
Caleb Heathcote
Mayor of New York Caleb Heathcote (1666 – 1721) merchant and public official in colonial New York was born in England. He emigrated to America in 1691; arrived in New York in 1692. After a romantic setback, his brother Samuel stealing his intended, Caleb established himself in New York. Like his brothers, he became a merchant adventurer, and sent his vessels to trade in various parts of the world and acquired large wealth for himself. He became a member of the governor’s council, a colonel of militia in Westchester county, county judge, and after 1696 mayor of Westchester borough town. Later he held the offices of mayor of New York City (1711 – 1713) and surveyor general of customs for all northern colonies. He engaged in contracting, milling, and land speculation in large tracts in Westchester, Dutchess, and Ulster counties. In 1715 he was appointed judge of admiralty for the provinces of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and " surveyor-general of the customs for the eastern district of North America," comprising all the British colonies north of Virginia. In addition to the ordinary duties of a collector of customs, he was in all matters the the authority to decide all revenue questions between the different provincial customs officers and the merchants of their respective districts. Both of these latter offices, as well as all his earlier ones except the two mayoralties above named, he held until his death. It seems he did not suffer a fall of status for the uprising.