Promiscuous Mobilization: Unstable Corruption Allegations and the “Negro Plot” of 1741 in New York City

This chapter analyzes the “Negro Plot” of New York in 1741, in which numerous black slaves and free people, as well as Catholic whites, were accused of conspiring with and corrupting others to commit a series of arsons in New York City over a bitterly cold winter and amid the threat of war. The chapter shows how corruption accusations surrounding the plot were “promiscuous,” in the sense that, as embedded in the colonial politics of the day, accusations made in terms of corruption escalated to increasingly implausible targets, even as they served to legitimate unlikely accusations. I show that this very promiscuity linked with the construction (and disintegration) of political narratives and official careers and was tethered to moralized visions of social order.