One batch of condemned slaves [arrested in connection with an alleged anti-White plot], although they were given an opportunity to save themselves by confessing, steadfastly maintained their innocence until they were brought to the stake. At this point their resolution gave way and they admitted their guilt. But the crowd that had turned out to watch the execution was too large and its demands for vengeance too strong to permit the Negroes to escape by a last-minute confession: the sentence of the court was duly carried out and the Negroes were chained and burned at the stake.

DEFINE: Confession here is demonstrated to be strategically useless — crowd vengeance overrode even legal pardons-by-confession, showing how extrajudicial mob sentiment governed slave executions.

XREF: Connects to broader histories of spectacle punishment and mob justice in colonial societies. FICTION: The scene of the condemned having resolution give way at the stake, only to be denied reprieve by the mob, is potent dramatic material.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 185