Ms. Meister
AP English, Period 4/5
November 6, 2009
Crucible Comparison Paper
During March and April in 1741, ten fires broke out at night throughout the city of New York
(Berlin and Harris, 84). It had been a severe winter and as the fires raged, so did rumors of a
great plot to destroy the city a plot that residents feared was formulated by the Spanish or their
own slaves (Berlin and Harris, 85). Britain was at war with Spain, and the port city was not far
from the line of fire. It was widely known that the Spanish offered freedom to any slaves who
would join their ranks and turn on their British masters, and memories of previous slave revolts
were still vivid in New Yorkers’ minds (Johnson, 57). It was a time of great fear, a fear that was
exploited by a young indentured servant named Mary Burton. After being arrested in connection
to a robbery, young Burton began spewing out tales of a grand conspiracy by the New York City
slaves to burn down the city, a plot supposedly led by a slave named Caesar and Burton’s white
master, John Hughson (“Witch-hunt”). As more arrests were made in the case, the numbers of
people involved in the conspiracy seemed to grow, as many those who were arrested were ready
to supply names of “co-conspirators” in order to avoid jail or execution (Johnson, 176). By the
end of the trials, thirteen black men were burned alive, seventy were sold into even more arduous
slave labor in the Caribbean; four white “conspirators” were hung and over one hundred black
men were jailed after numerous show trials that lasted throughout the summer (Berlin and Harris,
85). The set up and events of the New York Conspiracy of 1741 are eerily similar to those of the
Salem witch trials as outlined in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. These panics both began under
Burnes, 2
similar circumstances, when a cornered young girl shifted blame onto others to avoid punishment
and thus was thrust into the limelight and given excessive powers. The panics were then driven
by underlying fears and prejudices that clouded reason and led to quick convictions by means of
coerced and dubious testimonies in show trials that did not end until the upper members of
society began being named.
Both in The Crucible and in the New York Conspiracy, the hysteria and witch-hunts began
after young women, in order to avoid punishment, emitted wild accusations against others, and
continued because these accusations gave them undue power in their communities. In The
Crucible, Abigail Williams and Becky Parris were caught dancing in the forest, a “heathen” and
“obscene practice” according to Reverend Parris, and an act that would have warranted severe
punishment (Miller, 11). In order to avoid punishment, the girls attempted to shift the blame onto
someone else. Abigail blames Tituba for making the girls dance and claims she makes her
“dream corruptions” (Miller, 44). Similarly, Mary Burton, a sixteen-year-old indentured servant,
turned on others when she was being questioned in connection with a robbery of a general store
in 1741 (“Witch-hunt”). She had no useful information to give the authorities, who were
convinced she knew more than she did, and imprisoning and intimidating her in order to find out
(Johnson, 29). Burton swiftly blamed the robbery on “black scoundrels” who had threatened to
kill her for speaking (Johnson, 31). As authorities pressed her for more information, enticing her
with talk of freedom and money, threatening to lock her up again if she did not cooperate, Burton
began a stream of accusations, claiming her master, John Hughson, was the ringleader of a group
of black men who planned to burn New York City to the ground (Johnson, 37). By volunteering
more names and evidence, she was rewarded for her testimony with attention and protection. It
was a similar situation for the girls in The Crucible. The men and women of Salem would watch
Burnes, 3
in awe as these girls went into “trances,” listening to what they said and offering comfort and
prayers. In both of the male dominant societies of New York City and Salem, these girls were
overlooked and undervalued, especially in Burton’s case, because as an indentured servant she
was barely a step above the status of slave. By testifying, they entered into the spotlight,
garnering attention and exceptional powers within their communities for their shocking
testimonies. Once they entered this spotlight, it was almost impossible to back out. When Mary
Warren in the Crucible attempted it, she was accused of being a witch (Miller, 115). Had Burton
stopped giving up names, she too would have faced dire consequences.
Rampant paranoia was present in Salem and New York City, as well as deep racial and
societal prejudices, which clouded reason and sense and allowed for the witch-hunts to happen.
New York City residents feared they were on the brink of an attack by the Spanish, making them
suspicious of anything Spanish or Catholic, and because Spain offered freedom to slaves who
would join their ranks, New Yorkers were even more suspicious of their slaves (Johnson, 57).
These racial tensions served as a catalyst for the hysteria of 1741. There was also a great fear in
Salem, but it was a fear of the Devil and his servants. The Puritans thought of themselves living
on the edge of the Devil’s “citadel” and were terrified of being corrupted by him (Miller, 5). This
fear made the Puritans believe in Abigail and her followers’ antics and drove them into a witchhunt. They were so intent on trying to rid the Devil from Salem as quickly as possible that many
men of influence like Judge Danforth and the Reverends Hale and Parris did not question
whether or not the girls were telling the truth, even as they claimed to see a bird in the rafters that
wants to eat and tear their faces (Miller, 114-115). Actions were taken on impulse. It was the
same in New York City. The fires and a threat of an annihilation of the whole city caused its
residents and leaders to act rashly to get to the bottom of a great plot they believed they
Burnes, 4
uncovered, causing them to overlook increasingly bizarre statements by Mary Burton, such as
when she claimed to have seen “demon rats” and an “embryonic, black devil thing” in a room
with the man she was testifying against (Johnson, 195).
This sense of urgency also drove authorities in The Crucible and in New York to make swift
arrests and even swifter convictions through show trials that relied on forced and dubious
evidence and confessions. The men in authority in The Crucible would stand over those accused
of being witches or their supposed victims and demand names of others who had made a
compact with Lucifer. Reverends Hale and Parris were the first to do this, ordering the accused
Tituba to tell them whom she was with when she saw the Devil (Miller, 45). This led her to
supply the name the name of Sarah Good, after Putnam had helpfully suggested it, and spared
her being hung (Miller, 46). Naming names meant leniency, as did admitting to witchcraft and
alliance with the Devil, a point that Abigail and the other girls in the Crucible quickly latched on
to as they cried out on others, thus creating unreliable evidence and showing themselves to be
untrustworthy witnesses. This was also the case in the New York Conspiracy, where signs of
coerced testimony were even more blatant. Those who offered information were given monetary
rewards and some slaves were even offered freedom (Johnson, 75). As more slaves were arrested
in connection with the plot, more names were named, and the number of slaves in jail grew until
half of the male slaves in the city over sixteen had been implicated in the conspiracy (Johnson,
176-177). By providing monetary gain to the poor whites and slaves who testified, judges and
authorities on the case seemed to have a blatant disregard for facts, concerned only with making
more arrests, uncovering the “plot” and punishing those involved by any means. Judge Danforth
had a similar tenacious desire for “justice” in The Crucible, stating in response to a plea for
mercy on those accused of witchcraft, “as God have not empowered me like Joshua to stop this
Burnes, 5
sun from rising, so I cannot withhold from the perfection of their punishment” (Miller, 130).
While the authorities in New York did not believe they were “empowered” by God, they too
believed it was their duty to quash a rebellion of the underworld as quickly as possible, a result
of the fear and mistrust of the lower, “immoral” class.
In both The Crucible and in the New York Conspiracy, the hysteria and trials did not end
until the upper classes and the educated elite were targeted. While some in Salem like John
Proctor were skeptical all along of the girls’ claims of being afflicted by witches, it was not until
“a good soul” like Rebecca Nurse was accused that fervent believers like Reverend Hale began
to question what was happening, even more so after John Proctor as arrested (Miller, 37). This
was also the case in New York City when a white schoolmaster named John Ury was tried and
convicted of having a part in the conspiracy and hung late in the summer of 1741 (Berlin and
Harris, 87). Citizens of New York City and throughout New England were shocked and horrified
by this, as it was no longer “black property” being disposed of, or even the “lesser” sort of white
people (Johnson, 203). The trials were brought to a resounding halt soon afterwards when Mary
Burton, who was running out of names and was being pressed by the judges ruling in these trials
for more, began to name the family members and associates of the judges themselves (Johnson,
207). Reason and sanity then returned to New York City, and after Procter and Nurse were
convicted the hysteria began to abate in Salem. The judges and authorities of Salem and New
York City were no longer convicting and hanging the “scourges” of society; they were hanging
members of their own social class, which brought a reexamination and halt of the trials.
The New York Conspiracy was more widespread and deadly than the Salem witch trials, and
there was more truth behind it, as it is probable that some slaves in New York had, at the very
least, spoken of rebellion (Berlin and Harris, 86-87). Yet the wide extent of the plot as outlined
Burnes, 6
by Burton and the evidence given by the girls in The Crucible were both extremely improbable
and had devastating results. The panics in Salem and in New York City illustrate how fear,
distrust and prejudices can take hold of a community and cause it to loose all control and sense.
This lack of sense on part of the Puritans and New Yorkers was a catalyst for two tragic and
bloody events, as it led them to believe and act upon the wild accusations given by young girls
crushed by societal pressures, seeking to avoid punishment and gain attention. The hysteria,
arrests and executions of the Salem witch trials and the New York Conspiracy were the prices
paid for fear and prejudice.
Works Cited
Burnes, 7
Berlin, Ira and Harris, Leslie M., eds. Slavery in New York. New York: New Press, 2005.
Johnson, Mat. The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth Century
New York. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Group, 1976.
“Witch-hunt in New York: The 1741 Rebellion”. PBS. 29 October 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p286.html>.