Encyclopedia of African American History

Newton, John  77

time of the English takeover, in 1664, there were four times

the number of slaves in New York as there were in the Vir-

ginia colony. Th e population of slaves continued to increase,

and by the turn of the 18th century, slaves made up more

than 30 percent of the total population of the city. Th e slave

population included captives from western Africa, “sea-

soned” slaves born in the West Indies, and descendants of

these born in New York. Th e slaves involved in the 1712 re-

volt were identifi ed as “Coromantee,” from Akan- speaking

nations of present-day Ghana, and “Paw Paw,” a term used

for the Fon of Dahomey in present-day Togo. Th e names

of those executed included Anglo-American names such

as Sarah and Abigail, as well as Akan day-names such as

Quaco and Quashi.

See also: African Burial Ground, New York City; Coroman-

tee; New York Conspiracy of 1741; Northern Slavery; Slave

Resistance; Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in

Foreign Parts

Rebecca Hall

Bibliography

Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: In-

ternational Publishers, 1987.

Foote, Th elma. Black and White Manhattan: Th e History of Racial

Formation in Colonial New York City. New York: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 2004.

Rucker, Walter. “Th e River Flows On”: Black Resistance, Culture,

and Identity Formation in Early America. Baton Rouge: Loui-

siana State University Press, 2005.

Newton, John

John Newton (1725–1807), slave trader, hymn writer,

Church of England divine, was born in London on July

24, 1725. He was the only son of a captain in the merchant

marine who traded in the Mediterranean, and was later

appointed governor of York Fort in Hudson’s Bay, British

North America, where he died in 1750. Newton’s mother

was a devout Nonconformist. By his own account, aft er the

death of his beloved mother, and his father’s remarriage,

Newton was emotionally and intellectually neglected both

at home and the boarding school he attended at Stratford

in Essex. When he turned 11 years of age, he made the fi rst

of fi ve voyages on his father’s ship to the Mediterranean.

Later in life he refl ected upon this time, writing that his

year, a number of enslaved men and women met and per-
formed a blood oath in preparation for a planned revolt to
take place early in April. On April 7, 1712, at about two
in the morning, more than two dozen enslaved men and
women gathered in an orchard behind the house of a local
cooper in New York City’s east ward (near Wall Street on
the east side of the city). Th ey came armed—having sto-
len knives, guns, axes, and whatever weapons they could
get their hands on. Th e slaves set fi re to one of the cooper’s
outbuildings. When whites approached to put the fi re out,
the slaves killed nine men and wounded fi ve or six others.
Using this fi re as a distraction to cover their escape from
the city, the slaves fl ed the scene, running north through
the woods toward freedom. Robert Hunter, the colonial
governor of New York, immediately called out the militia
to “drive the island” and through this method and through
strict house-to-house searches in the town, 27 men and
women were arrested. Th e militia found the bodies of six
additional slaves who had killed themselves before they
could be captured. Th e prisoners were quickly tried and
convicted, and 21 of these men and women were immedi-
ately executed. One of the convicted women was pregnant,
and her execution was stayed until aft er she gave birth. Th e
punishment was brutal: some were burned at the stake,
while others were broken on the wheel. One slave was sus-
pended from chains until he died.
At the time of this revolt, New York City was a thriv-
ing British colony, its economy based in the booming slave
trade and slave plantation system. Transatlantic slave trad-
ers ran their business from the city, and merchants became
wealthy providing England’s monocultural sugar-growing
islands in the Caribbean with staple crops grown by settlers
and their slaves in the fertile Hudson Valley. In addition to
agricultural work in the city and in outlying farms, enslaved
Africans worked the docks, served in homes, worked in a
variety of skilled trades, and supplied provisions to local
markets throughout the city. Many slaves were “rented” to
work on city construction projects. Th e wounded skeletons
of slaves found in New York City’s African Burial Ground
provided mute testimony to how hard they were worked.
For example, several women buried there were found with
skull collapse from being forced to carry huge burdens on
their heads.
Th e institution of slavery preexisted English rule, be-
ginning in 1626 shortly aft er the Dutch occupation and
settlement of what was then called New Amsterdam. At the