New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan

Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Anisfield-Wolf Award Winner

In New York Burning, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore recounts these dramatic events of 1741, when ten fires blazed across Manhattan and panicked whites suspecting it to be the work a slave uprising went on a rampage. In the end, thirteen black men were burned at the stake, seventeen were hanged and more than one hundred black men and women were thrown into a dungeon beneath City Hall.
Even back in the seventeenth century, the city was a rich mosaic of cultures, communities and colors, with slaves making up a full one-fifth of the population. Exploring the political and social climate of the times, Lepore dramatically shows how, in a city rife with state intrigue and terror, the threat of black rebellion united the white political pluralities in a frenzy of racial fear and violence.

Author: Jill Lepore
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 08/08/2006
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.71lbs
Size: 8.02h x 5.28w x 0.71d
ISBN: 9781400032266
Language: English