After three days he died, as Dr. Francis says, "a victim of
his own temerity."
And still the gallows stood on the Field of Sleep, and also a big elm
tree which sometimes served as the "gallows tree." Naturally, Indians
and negroes predominated in the lists of malefactors executed. The
redmen were distrusted from the beginning on Manhattan,--and with some
basic reason, one must admit;--as for the blacks, they were more
severely dealt with than any other class. The rigid laws and
restrictions of that day were applied especially rigidly to the
slaves. A slave was accounted guilty of heavy crimes on the very
lightest sort of evidence, and the penalties imposed seem to us out of
all proportion to the acts. Arson, for instance, was a particularly
heinous offence--when committed by a negro. The negro riots, which
form such an exceedingly black chapter in New York's history, and
which horrify our more humane modern standards with ghastly pictures
of hangings and burnings at the stake, were often caused by nothing
more criminal than incendiarism.
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