In 1741, African slaves, Spanish sailors, Irish servants and soldiers, and antinomian Dissenters conspired to burn New York’s Fort George and murder the city’s wealthy and powerful inhabitants. They hatched their plot at John Hughson’s tavern and spread word to the surrounding countryside and down Long Island. At the sight of flames from the city, country slaves and servants should rise up, kill their masters, and move on the city where they would welcome a Spanish flotilla of conquerors and personal freedom.

Brown. Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791, Second Edition. Houghton-Mifflin.

Middlekauf, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005.

Nellis, Eric. The Long Road to Change: America’s Revolution, 1750-1820. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2012.

Paine, “Common Sense”

Rediker & Linebaugh. Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press. 2000.

Wood, Gordon. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf. 1992.

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