The Rev. John Sharpe served as an Anglican priest in New Jersey at the behest of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) at various points between 1704 and 1717 (to congregations including those at Perth Amboy, Burlington, Woodbridge, Maidenhead, and Hopewell), but in the latter portion of this time served primarily as the Chaplain to the British forces in New York City.[1] In the summer of 1712[2] he wrote a letter[3] to the Secretary of the Society which dealt largely with a recent rebellion[4] by enslaved persons that had occurred in the City on April 6 of that year. The text[5] of the letter pertaining to the revolt is as follows:
By the Clergy’s Address you will see what new Obstacles are in the way of converting the Heathen, and [though] it has given the greatest offence, I hope it may be at least for the advancement of the good work. Some Negro Slaves here of the Nations of Carmantee & Pappa plotted to destroy all the white in order to obtain their freedom, and kept their Conspiracy Secret that there was not the least Suspicion of it (as formerly there had often been) till it come to the Execution. It was agreed to on New Year’s day, the Conspirators tying themselves to Secrecy by Sucking ye blood of each other’s hand. And to make them invulnerable, as they believed, a free [negro] who pretends Sorcery gave them a powder to rub on their [Clothes] which made them so confident that on Sunday night après about 2 [o’]clock, [at] about the going down of the moon, they Set fire to a house which, [alarming] the town, they stood in the Streets & Shot down and Stabbed as many as they could [until] a great Gun from the [fort] called up the Inhabitants in Arms who soon [scattered] them. They murdered about 8 and wounded about 12 more who are Since recovered. Some of them in their flight shot themselves. One shot first his wife and then himself and some who had hid themselves in Town, when they went to apprehend them, [cut] their own throats. Many were Convicted and about 18 have [suffered] death. This barbarous Conspiracy of the [Negroes] which was first thought to be general, [opened] the mouths of many against negroes being made Christians. Mr. Neau durst hardly appear. His school was [blamed] as the main [occasion] of it, and a Petition had like to have been presented if the Governor had not Stood to his Cause. Amongst all those that suffered Here none but two that had been of his School, one of which only was baptized and he was condemned on slender Evidence in the heat of the People’s resentment. I saw him suffer and heard him declare his [innocence] with his dying breath and then but too late for him he was pitied and proclaimed innocent by the Generality of the People. The other of the [Catechumens] was Slave to an eminent merchant, one Hendrich Hooghlandt who was murdered. He had for two years solicited his master for leave to be baptized but could not obtain it. He was certainly in the Conspiracy, but was hanged in Chains for the murder of his Master. After his hanging three days I went to him and exhorted him to confession. He said he knew of the Conspiracy but was not guilty of any bloodshed in the tumult. The cry against [Catechizing] the negroes continued [until], upon conviction, they were found to be Such as never frequented Mr. Neau’s School, and what is very observable, the Persons whose Negros have been found guilty are such as are declared opposers of Christianizing Negroes.
The Spanish Indians were at first most Suspected as having most understanding to carry on a plot & being Christians. There was no Evidence against any but two, and that was presumptive, however they were condemned. I visited them in prison, & went with them to the gallows where after they were [tied] up they declared their [innocence] of what was laid to their charge & behaved themselves as became Christians. While I was at prayers with them, interest was made with the Governor for their reprieve: Upon the whole, as ye Christian Religion has been much Blasphemed, and the Society’s Pious design has been much obstructed. By this bloody attempt of the Negroes, I am [hopeful] that both shall be promoted since it appear, on [trial], that those are Innocent who have been Seasoned with principles of Religion and those are but a small number that come to School in comparison of the many hundred that are in this place. I believe not above a tenth.
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| Figure 1: Elias Neau, French Huguenot imprisoned prior to his emigration to New York, from A Short Account of the Life and Sufferings of Elias Neau (London, 1749), Unknown artist, marked as public domain (Artworks-8oFdzu6gvND7aoUU-1bHNWA-t500x500), more details on Wikimedia Commons. |
Sharpe’s account of the revolt is revealing for a number of reasons. It indicates an awareness of the reality that punishments of Blacks were often not the result of law-breaking on an individual level. White anxiety frequently led to unjust verdicts which included torture and capital punishment for innocent Blacks. The letter describes some of the early stages of White crackdown following the revolt, which in the ensuing years would expand in scope to the passing of even more draconian laws in New York and New Jersey in 1712-14. Furthermore, Sharpe himself is involved in the cross-examination of some of those who were accused, showing that priests participated hand-in-glove in the system of legal authority in the colonies that embraced slavery.
The letter also shows that attempts to Christianize the enslaved were controversial at the time, and certainly not exhaustive or widespread. Sharpe mentions that no more than one tenth of the enslaved in the city had ever attended Mr. Neau’s School, which was oriented to this purpose. It is possible that Sharpe is attempting to de-emphasize the danger posed by Christianizing enslaved persons, but various studies support the conclusion that outreach efforts to the enslaved were quite limited.
Perhaps most significantly, the interrogations yielded a particular conviction for Sharpe which he passed along as salutary: that Christian instruction made enslaved persons more obedient and less likely to revolt. Thus the letter shows a key moment in the concretization of this ecclesial policy toward slavery. The interpretive work done by Sharpe as a minister of the Church of England assumes the legitimacy of slavery, and highlights the value of the Christianization of the enslaved in the Church of England as a useful buttress of the institution of slavery. The SPG supported and broadly promulgated this conclusion.[6]
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
[1] Nelson Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), 639-640.
[2] Dated from New York to June 23, 1712.
[3] Courtesy of the British Online Archives, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) Correspondence Collection: “American in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1635-1928” A Series Letter Book Vol. 7, pages 214-217. Manuscript copy scans at:
https://microform.digital/boa/collections/11/volumes/37/the-a-series-letter-books-1702-1737
[4] A number of recent books have recounted some aspects of this event including Graham Russell Hodges, Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 64-65; Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 82-82; Katharine Gerbner, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 120-123. Anne-Claire Fauquez, “‘A Bloody Conspiracy’: Race, Power and Religion in New York’s 1712 Slave Insurrection,” pages 204-225 in L. Henneton and L. Roper, eds., Fear and the Shaping of Early American Societies (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
[5] Transcription edited for clarity according to modern language conventions. Alterations to the original text made for the sake of clarity appear in [brackets]. Of these alterations, spelling changes appear as [plain text], while slightly altered or added language for the sake of clarity appear in [italics]. Punctuation changes, expansions of abbreviations, and updated archaisms (e.g. substitutions of “you” for “thee” or “thou”) are not noted.
[6] Gerbner, Christian Slavery, 123.
