I wrote most of this book during a leave jointly funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Harvard University. I am deeply grateful for the time that made writing possible, and especially for the support of my dean and department at Harvard. I also thank the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for providing a much-needed research grant early on. And I’m grateful to the librarians and archivists at the New-York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, and the Museum of the City of New York, whose efforts greatly aided my research. I want especially to thank James Folts at the New York State Archives for arranging document scanning of the fragile New York Colony Council Records.
On bleaker days, it has seemed to me as though there have been only a few hours over the last few years that I’ve escaped eighteenth-century New York. Mercifully, that hasn’t actually been the case. To everyone who rescued me from my work with coffee and phone calls, runs along the river and walks through the woods: bless you. For every conversation, for every excursion, I thank Adrianna Alty, Elise Broach, Kathleen Dalton, Deborah Favreau, Benjamin Filene, Jane Kamensky, Lisa Lovett, Elizabeth McNerney, Bruce Schulman, Rachel Seidman, Ariadne Valsamis, Denise Webb, and Wendy Weitzner. Finally, my thanks to the people who wake me up in the morning, the best part of every day: Timothy, Gideon, Simon, and Oliver Leek.
Cambridge, March 2006
JILL LEPORE
New York Burning
Jill Lepore is Professor of History at Harvard University and the author of The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity, which won both the Bancroft Prize and Phi Beta Kappa’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
OTHER BOOKS BY JILL LEPORE
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the
Origins of American Identity
A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters
in the Newly United States
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 2006
Copyright © 2005 by Jill Lepore
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Lepore, Jill, [date]
New York burning: liberty, slavery, and conspiracy in eighteenth-century
Manhattan / Jill Lepore.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. New York (N.Y.)—History—Conspiracy of 1741. 2. Slave
insurrections—New York (State)—New York—History—18th
century. 3. Fires—New York (State)—New York—History—18th
century. 4. African Americans—New York (State)—New York—
History—18th century. 5. New York (N.Y.)—Race relations.
6. New York (N.Y.)—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775.
I. Title.
F128.4.L47 2005
974.7’102—dc22 2004057625
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eISBN: 978-0-307-42700-7
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