New York Slave Revolt

April 6, 1712

Twenty-three enslaved Africans set fire to a building on Maiden Lane and waited with muskets and hatchets. Nine whites died before the militia arrived. Twenty-one of the rebels were executed, some burned alive, some broken on the wheel. The city tightened its slave codes and called it order. The revolt haunted the city's slaveholders and fueled the larger panic of 1741 a generation later.