Slavery in New York and New Jersey

From Wikipedia, 1/16/2022

New England

The 1677 work The Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians documents English colonial prisoners of war (not, in fact, opposing combatants, but imprisoned members of English-allied forces) being enslaved and sent to Caribbean destinations in the aftermath of Metacom's War.[50][51] Captive indigenous opponents, including women and children, were also sold into slavery at a substantial profit, to be transported to West Indies colonies.[52][53]

African and Native American slaves made up a smaller part of the New England economy, which was based on yeoman farming and trades, than in the South, and a smaller fraction of the population, but they were present.[54] Most were house servants, but some worked at farm labor.[55] The Puritans codified slavery in 1641.[56][57] The Massachusetts Bay royal colony passed the Body of Liberties, which prohibited slavery in some instances, but did allow three legal bases of slavery.[57] Slaves could be held if they were captives of war, if they sold themselves into slavery, were purchased from elsewhere, or if they were sentenced to slavery by the governing authority.[57] The Body of Liberties used the word "strangers" to refer to people bought and sold as slaves, as they were generally not native born English subjects. Colonists came to equate this term with Native Americans and Africans.[58]

The New Hampshire Assembly in 1714 passed "An Act To Prevent Disorders In The Night," prefiguring the development of sundown towns in the United States:[59][60]

Whereas great disorders, insolencies and burglaries are oft times raised and committed in the night time by Indian, Negro, and Molatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty, No Indian, Negro, or Molatto is to be from Home after 9 o'clock.

Notices emphasizing and re-affirming the curfew were published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 1764 and 1771.[59]

New York and New Jersey

Further information: History of slavery in New York and History of slavery in New Jersey

The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven enslaved blacks who worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders to New Amsterdam (present day New York City), capital of the nascent province of New Netherland.[61] The Dutch colony expanded across the North River (Hudson River) to Bergen (in today's New Jersey). Later, slaves were also held privately by settlers in the area.[62][63] Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, and their children could be baptized. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell to the English in the 1660s, the company freed all its slaves, which created an early nucleus of free Negros in the area.[61]

The English continued to import more slaves. Enslaved Africans performed a wide variety of skilled and unskilled jobs, mostly in the burgeoning port city and surrounding agricultural areas. In 1703 more than 42% of New York City's households held slaves, a percentage higher than in the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, and second only to Charleston in the South.[64]

History of slavery in New York (state)

From Wikipedia,

The enslavement of African people in the United States continued in New York as part of the Dutch slave trade. The Dutch West India Company imported eleven African slaves to New Amsterdam in 1626, with the first slave auction held in New Amsterdam in 1655.[1] With the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies (after Charleston, South Carolina), more than 42% of New York City households held slaves by 1703, often as domestic servants and laborers.[2] Others worked as artisans or in shipping and various trades in the city. Slaves were also used in farming on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, as well as the Mohawk Valley region.

During the American Revolutionary War, the British troops occupied New York City in 1776. The Philipsburg Proclamation promised freedom to slaves who left rebel masters, and thousands moved to the city for refuge with the British. By 1780, 10,000 black people lived in New York. Many were slaves who had escaped from their slaveholders in both Northern and Southern colonies. After the war, the British evacuated about 3,000 slaves from New York, taking most of them to resettle as free people in Nova Scotia, where they are known as Black Loyalists.

Of the Northern states, New York was next to last in abolishing slavery. (In New Jersey, mandatory, unpaid "apprenticeships" did not end until the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, in 1865.)[3]: 44

After the American Revolution, the New York Manumission Society was founded in 1785 to work for the abolition of slavery and to aid free blacks. The state passed a 1799 law for gradual abolition, a law which freed no living slave. After that date, children born to slave mothers were required to work for the mother's master as indentured servants until age 28 (men) and 25 (women). The last slaves were freed of this obligation on July 4, 1827 (28 years after 1799).[1] African Americans celebrated with a parade.

Upstate New York, in contrast with New York City, was an anti-slavery leader. The first meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society opened in Utica, although local hostility caused the meeting to be moved to the home of Gerrit Smith, in Peterboro. The Oneida Institute, near Utica, briefly the center of American abolitionism, accepted both black and white male enrolees on an equal basis. New-York Central College, near Cortland, was an abolitionist institution of higher learning founded by Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor, that accepted all students without prejudice. It was the first college to have black professors teaching white students. However, when a black male faculty member, William G. Allen, married a white student, they had to flee the country for England, never to return.

Dutch rule

Initial group of slaves

In 1613, Juan (Jan) Rodriguez from Santo Domingo became the first non-indigenous person to settle in what was then known as New Amsterdam. Of Portuguese and West African descent, he was a free man.[4]

Systematic slavery began in 1626 in the present-day state of New York, when eleven captive Africans arrived on a Dutch West India Company ship in the New Amsterdam harbor.[5][4] Historian Ira Berlin called them Atlantic Creoles who had European and African ancestry and spoke many languages. In some cases, they attained their European heritage in Africa when European traders conceived children with African women. Some were Africans who were crew members on ships and some came from ports of the Americas.[6][a] Their first names—like Paul, Simon, and John—indicated if they had European heritage. Their last names indicated where they came from, like Portuguese, d'Congo, or d'Angola. People from the Congo or Angola were known for their mechanical skills and docile manners. Six slaves had names that indicated a connection with New Amsterdam, such as Manuel Gerritsen, which he likely received after their arrival in New Amsterdam and to differentiate from repeated first names.[6] Men were laborers who worked the fields, built forts and roads, and performed other forms of labor.[5] According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem adopted from southern colonies, children born to enslaved women were considered born into slavery, regardless of the ethnicity or status of the father.[1]

In February 1644, the eleven slaves petitioned Willem Kieft, the director general for the colony, for their freedom. This occurred during a time where there were skirmishes with Native American people and the Dutch wanted blacks to help protect their settlements and did not want the slaves to join the Native Americans. These eleven slaves were granted partial freedom, where they could buy land and a home and earn a wage from their master, and then full freedom. Their children remained in slavery. By 1664, the original eleven slaves, as well as other slaves who had attained half-freedom, for a total of at least 30 black landowners, lived on Manhattan near the Fresh Water Pond.[7][4]

Slave trade

For more than two decades after the first shipment, the Dutch West India Company was dominant in the importation of slaves from the coasts of Africa. A number of slaves were imported directly from the company's stations in Angola to New Netherland.[5]

Due to a lack of workers in the colony, it relied upon on African slaves, who were described by the Dutch as "proud and treacherous", a stereotype for African-born slaves.[5] The Dutch West India Company allowed New Netherlanders to trade slaves from Angola for "seasoned" African slaves from the Dutch West Indies, particularly Curaçao, who sold for more than other slaves. They also bought slaves that came from privateers of Spanish slave ships.[5] For instance, La Garce a French privateer, arrived in New Amsterdam in 1642 with Spanish Negroes that were captured from a Spanish ship. Although they claimed to be free, and not African, the Dutch sold them as slaves due to their skin color.[6]

Slaves in the north were often owned by notable people like Benjamin Franklin, William Penn and John Hancock. In New Amsterdam, William Henry Seward grew up in a slave-owning family. Against slavery, he became Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State during the Civil War.[8]

Unique to slaves from other colonies, slaves could sue another person whether white or black. Early instances included suits filed for lost wages and damages when a slave's dog was injured by a white man's dog. Slaves could also be sued.[b]

Partial and full freedom

By 1644, some slaves had earned partial freedom, or half-freedom, in New Amsterdam and were able to earn wages. Under Roman-Dutch law they had other rights in the commercial economy, and intermarriage with working-class whites was frequent.[10] Land grant records show that Land of the Blacks was located just north of New Amsterdam. As the English began to seize New Amsterdam in 1664, the Dutch freed about 40 men and women who had been granted half-slave status, to ensure that the English would not keep them enslaved. The new freemen had their original land grants finalized and all grants were officially marked as owned by the new freemen.[11]

English rule

In 1664, the English took over New Amsterdam and the colony. They continued to import slaves to support the work needed. Enslaved Africans performed a wide variety of skilled and unskilled jobs, mostly in the burgeoning port city and surrounding agricultural areas. In 1703, more than 42% of New York City's households held slaves, a percentage higher than in the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, and second only to Charleston in the South.[2]

In 1708, the New York Colonial Assembly passed a law entitled "Act for Preventing the Conspiracy of Slaves" which prescribed a death sentence for any slave who murdered or attempted to murder his or her master. This law, one of the first of its kind in Colonial America, was in part a reaction to the murder of William Hallet III and his family in Newtown (Queens).[12]

In 1711, a formal slave market was established at the end of Wall Street on the East River, and it operated until 1762.[13]

An act of the New York General Assembly, passed in 1730, the last of a series of New York slave codes, provided that:

Forasmuch as the number of slaves in the cities of New York and Albany, as also within the several counties, towns and manors within this colony, doth daily increase, and that they have oftentimes been guilty of confederating together in running away, and of other ill and dangerous practices, be it therefore unlawful for above three slaves to meet together at any time, nor at any other place, than when it shall happen they meet in some servile employment for their masters' or mistresses' profit, and by their masters' or mistresses' consent, upon penalty of being whipped upon the naked back, at the discretion of any one justice of the peace, not exceeding forty lashes for each offense.[14]

Manors and towns could appoint a common whipper at no more than three shillings per person.[15] Blacks were given the lowest status jobs, the ones the Dutch did not want to perform, like meting out corporal punishment and executions.[16]

As in other slaveholding societies, the city was swept by periodic fears of slave revolt. Incidents were misinterpreted under such conditions. In what was called the New York Conspiracy of 1741, city officials believed a revolt had started. Over weeks, they arrested more than 150 slaves and 20 white men, trying and executing several, in the belief they had planned a revolt. Historian Jill Lepore believes whites unjustly accused and executed many blacks in this event.[17]

In 1753, the Assembly provided there should be paid "for every negro, mulatto or other slave, of four years old and upwards, imported directly from Africa, five ounces of Sevil[le] Pillar or Mexico plate [silver], or forty shillings in bills of credit made current in this colony."[18]

American Revolution

African Americans fought on both sides in the American Revolution. Many slaves chose to fight for the British, as they were promised freedom by General Guy Carleton in exchange for their service. After the British occupied New York City in 1776, slaves escaped to their lines for freedom. The black population in New York grew to 10,000 by 1780, and the city became a center of free blacks in North America.[10] The fugitives included Deborah Squash and her husband Harvey, slaves of George Washington, who escaped from his plantation in Virginia and reached freedom in New York.[10]

In 1781, the state of New York offered slaveholders a financial incentive to assign their slaves to the military, with the promise of freedom at war's end for the slaves. In 1783, black men made up one-quarter of the rebel militia in White Plains, who were to march to Yorktown, Virginia for the last engagements.[10]

By the Treaty of Paris (1783), the United States required that all American property, including slaves, be left in place, but General Guy Carleton followed through on his commitment to the freedmen. When the British evacuated from New York, they transported 3,000 Black Loyalists on ships to Nova Scotia (now Maritime Canada), as recorded in the Book of Negroes at the National Archives of Great Britain and the Black Loyalists Directory at the National Archives at Washington.[10][19] With British support, in 1792 a large group of these Black Britons left Nova Scotia to create an independent colony in Sierra Leone.[20]

Further information: Black Nova Scotians and Sierra Leone Creole people

Gradual abolition

In 1781, the state legislature voted to free those slaves who had fought for three years with the rebels or were regularly discharged during the Revolution.[21] The New York Manumission Society was founded in 1785, and worked to prohibit the international slave trade and to achieve abolition. It established the African Free School in New York City, the first formal educational institution for blacks in North America. It served both free and slave children. The school expanded to seven locations and produced some of its students advanced to higher education and careers. These included James McCune Smith, who gained his medical degree with honors at the University of Glasgow after being denied admittance to two New York colleges. He returned to practice in New York and also published numerous articles in medical and other journals.[10]

By 1790, one in three blacks in New York state were free. Especially in areas of concentrated population, such as New York City, they organized as an independent community, with their own churches, benevolent and civic organizations, and businesses that catered to their interests.[10]

Although there was movement towards abolition of slavery, the legislature took steps to characterize indentured servitude for blacks in a way that redefined slavery in the state. Slavery was important economically, both in New York City and in agricultural areas, such as Brooklyn. In 1799, the legislature passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. It freed no living slave. It declared children of slaves born after July 4, 1799, to be legally free, but the children had to serve an extended period of indentured servitude: to the age of 28 for males and to 25 for females. Slaves born before that date were redefined as indentured servants and could not be sold, but they had to continue their unpaid labor.[22] From 1800 to 1827, white and black abolitionists worked to end slavery and attain full citizenship in New York. During this time, there was a rise in white supremacy, which was at odds with the increased anti-slavery efforts of the early 19th century.[23] Peter Williams Jr., an influential black abolitionist and minister, encouraged other blacks to "by a strict obedience and respect to the laws of the land, form an invulnerable bulwark against the shafts of malice" to better the chances of freedom and a better life.[24]

African-Americans' participation as soldiers in defending the state during the War of 1812 added to public support for their full rights to freedom. In 1817, the state freed all slaves born before July 4, 1799 (the date of the gradual abolition law), to be effective in 1827. It continued with the indenture of children born to slave mothers until their 20s, as noted above.[22] Because of the gradual abolition laws, there were children still bound in apprenticeships when their parents were free.[25] This encouraged African-American anti-slavery activists.[25]

In Sketches of America (1818), British author Henry Bradshaw Fearon, who visited the young United States on a fact-finding mission to inform Britons considering emigration, described the situation in New York City as he found it in August 1817:

“New York is called a ‘free state:’ that it may be so so theoretically, or when compared with its southern neighbors; but if, in England, we saw in the Times newspaper such advertisements as the following, we should conclude that freedom from slavery existed only in words.”[26]

On July 5, 1827, the African-American community celebrated final emancipation in the state with a parade through New York City.[24][27] July 5 was chosen over July 4, because the national holiday was not meant for blacks, as Frederick Douglass stated in his famous What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? speech of July 5, 1852.[27]

Right to vote

New York residents were less willing to give blacks equal voting rights. By the constitution of 1777, voting was restricted to free men who could satisfy certain property requirements for value of real estate. This property requirement disfranchised poor men among both blacks and whites. The reformed Constitution of 1821 eliminated the property requirement for white men, but set a prohibitive requirement of $250 (equivalent to $5,000 in 2020), about the price of a modest house,[28] for black men.[22] In the 1826 election, only 16 blacks voted in New York City.[3]: 47 "As late as 1869, a majority of the state's voters cast ballots in favor of retaining property qualifications that kept New York's polls closed to many blacks. African-American men did not obtain equal voting rights in New York until ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in 1870."[22]

Freedom's Journal

Beginning March 16, 1827, John Brown Russwurm published Freedom's Journal, written by and directed to African Americans.[29][30] Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm were editors of the journal; they used it to appeal to African Americans across the nation.[31] The powerful words published spread rapid positive influence to African Americans who could help establish a new community. The emergence of an African-American journal was a very important movement in New York. It showed that blacks could gain education and be part of literate society.[32]

White newspapers published a fictional "Bobalition" print series. This was made in mockery of blacks, using the way an uneducated colored person would pronounce abolition.[33]

Involvement in the illegal slave trade

Beginning in the early 1850s, New York City became a key center for the Atlantic slave trade, which Congress had banned in 1807. The main slave traders arrived in Manhattan during this period from Brazil and Africa, and became known as the Portuguese Company. Two of the key traffickers were Manoel Basilio da Cunha Reis and Jose Maia Ferreira. They posed as merchants in legal trade but in fact bought up vessels which they sent to the African coast, usually the Congo River region. The vast majority of vessels were ultimately bound for Cuba. In total over 400 illegal slave vessels left the United States during this period, the vast majority from New York, although others departed from New Orleans, Boston, and other minor ports. This trade was enabled by American captains and sailors, corrupt U.S. officials in New York, and by the ruling Democratic Party, which had limited interest in suppressing the trade.

African Burial Ground

In 1991, a construction project required an archaeological and cultural study of 290 Broadway in Lower Manhattan to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 before construction could begin. During the excavation and study, human remains were found in a former six-acre burial ground for African Americans that dated from the mid-1630s to 1795. It is believed that there are more than 15,000 skeletal remains of colonial New York's free and enslaved blacks. It is the country's largest and earliest burial ground for African-Americans.[34]

This discovery demonstrated the large-scale importance of slavery and African Americans to New York and national history and economy. The African Burial Ground has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and a National Monument for its significance. A memorial and interpretive center for the African Burial Ground have been created to honor those buried and to explore the many contributions of African Americans and their descendants to New York and the nation.[35]

Notes

1. The Dutch engaged in battles with the Spanish and French as they sought to have a hold on the slave trade and they would keep people of color as war prizes, with no distinction between those who may have been slaves, and those who were free crew members.[6]

2. On December 9, 1638, a slave known as Anthony the Portuguese sued a white merchant, Anthony Jansen from Salee, and was awarded reparations for damages caused to his hog by the defendant's dog. In the following year Pedro Negretto successfully sued an Englishman, John Seales, for wages due for tending hogs. Manuel de Reus, a servant of the Director General Willem Kieft, granted a power of attorney to the commas at Fort Orange to collect fifteen guilders in back wages for him from Hendrick Fredricksz." Unique to this colony was how punishment could be given to a Slave. In this case he was suited, "...in 1639 a white merchant Jan Jansen Damen, sued Little Manuel (sometimes called Manuel Minuit) and was in turn sued by Manuel de Reus; both cases were settled out of court."[9]

References

1. Harper, Douglas (2003). "Emancipation in New York". Slavery in the North.

2. Oltman, Adele (November 7, 2005). "The Hidden History of Slavery in New York". The Nation.

3. Foner, Eric (2015). Gateway to Freedom. The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. New York: W.W. Norton.

4. Hodges, Graham R.G (2005). Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East New Jersey, 1613-1863. U. of North Carolina Press.

5. Harper, Douglas (2003). "Slavery in New York". Slavery in the North.

6. Harris, Leslie M. (2004-08-01). In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. University of Chicago Press. pp. 18–19.

7. Harris, Leslie M. (2004-08-01). In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. University of Chicago Press. pp. 23–24.

8. Harper, Douglas (2003). "Slavery in the North". Slavery in the North.

9. Faucquez, Anne-Claire (2019). "Corporate Slavery in Seventeenth-Century New York" in Catherine Armstrong, The Many Faces of Slavery. New Perspectives on Slave Ownership and Experiences in the Americas. Bloomsbury.

10. "Exhibit: Slavery in New York". New York Historical Society. October 2005.

11. Peter R. Christoph, "Freedmen of New Amsterdam", Selected Rensselaerwicjk Papers, New York State Library, 1991

12. Wolfe, Missy. Insubordinate Spirit: A True Story of Life and Loss in Earliest America 1610-1665. Guilford CT, 2012, pp. 192–194.

13. Philip, Abby. "A permanent reminder of Wall Street’s hidden slave-trading past is coming soon", Washington Post, April 15, 2015,

14. Dillon, John Brown (1879). Oddities of Colonial Legislation in America: As Applied to the Public Lands, Primitive Education, Religion, Morals, Indians, Etc., with Authentic Records of the Origin and Growth of Pioneer Settlements, Embracing Also a Condensed History of the States and Territories. R. Douglass. pp. 225–226.

15. Weise, Arthur James (1880). History of the seventeen towns of Rensselaer County, from the colonization of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck to the present time. Troy, New York: Troy, N. Y., Francis & Tucker. p. 6.

16. Harris, Leslie M. (2004-08-01). In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. University of Chicago Press. p. 20.

17. Lepore, Jill, New York Burning; Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan, 2005.

18. Excise, New York (State) Department of (1897). Annual Report of the State Commissioner of Excise of the State of New York. Department of Excise. p. 523.

19. "African Nova Scotians". March 2020.

20. The Journal of Negro History. United Pub. Corporation. 1922. p. 184.

21. Eisenstadt, Peter (2005-05-19). Encyclopedia of New York State. Syracuse University Press. p. 19.

22. "African American Voting Rights" Archived November 9, 2010, at the Library of Congress Web Archives, New York State Archives, retrieved February 11, 2012

23. Gellman, David N. (August 2008). Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777–1827. LSU Press. p. 10.

24. Peterson, Carla L. (2011-02-22). Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City. Yale University Press. p. 1826.

25. Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003: 93–95.

26. Fearon, Henry Bradshaw (1818). Sketches of America: A Narrative Journey of Five Thousand Miles Through the Eastern and Western States. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. pp. 56–57.

27. Sinha, Manisha (2016-02-23). The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition. Yale University Press. p. 201.

28. Harper, Douglas (2003). "Emancipation in New York".

29. Hodges, Graham Russell (2010). David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 33.

30. Penn, Irvine Garland (1891). The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. Willey & Company. pp. 26.

31. Capie, Julia M. "Freedom of Unspoken Speech: Implied Defamation and Its Constitutional Limitations". Touro Law Review 31, no. 4 (October 2015): 675.

32. Gellman, David N. "Race, the Public Sphere, and Abolition in Late Eighteenth-Century New York," Journal of the Early Republic 20, no. 4 (2000): 607–36.

33. "Bobalition of slavery". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

34. "History & Culture - African Burial Ground National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)". National Park Service.

35. "African Burial Ground National Monument", National Park Service.

History of Slavery in New Jersey

From Wikipedia

Slavery in New Jersey began in the early 17th century, when Dutch colonists trafficked African slaves for labor to develop the colony of New Netherland.[1][2]: 44 After England took control of the colony in 1664, its colonists continued the importation of slaves from Africa. They also imported "seasoned" slaves from their colonies in the West Indies and enslaved Native Americans from the Carolinas.

Most Dutch and English immigrants entered the colony as indentured servants, who worked for a fixed number of years to repay their passage. As conditions in England improved and the number of indentured laborers declined, New Jersey's colonists trafficked more Africans for needed labor. To promote increasing the number of laborers and settlers in order to develop the colony, the colonial government awarded settlers headrights of 60 acres (24 ha) of land for each person transported to the colony. In 1704, after East Jersey and West Jersey unified, the Province of New Jersey passed a slave code prohibiting slaves and free blacks from owning property, further restricting African-Americans in the state.[2]: 44

During the American Revolution, enslaved Africans fought on each side. The British Crown promised freedom to slaves who would leave their rebel masters and fight for the British. The number of Blacks in Manhattan increased to 10,000, as thousands of enslaved Africans escaped to the British for the promise of freedom. The British refused to return the former enslaved to the Americans and they evacuated many Black Loyalists together with their troops and other Loyalists; they resettled more than 3,000 freedmen in their colony of Nova Scotia. Others were transported to England and the West Indies.

Bergen County developed as the largest slaveholding county in the state,[3] in part because many enslaved Africans were used as laborers in its ports and cities.[4] At its peak Bergen County enslaved 3,000 Africans in 1800, constituting nearly 20% of its total population.[5] After the Revolutionary War, many northern states rapidly passed laws to abolish slavery, but New Jersey did not abolish it until 1804, and then in a process of gradual emancipation similar to that of New York. But, in New Jersey, some Africans were enslaved as late as 1865. (In New York, they were all freed by 1827.) The law made these Africans free at birth, but it required children (born to enslaved mothers), to serve lengthy apprenticeships as a type of indentured servant until early adulthood for the masters of their mothers kept in bondage. New Jersey was the last of the Northern states to abolish slavery completely. The last 16 enslaved Africans in New Jersey were freed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment.[6]

The Underground Railroad had several routes crossing the state,[7] four of which ended in Jersey City, where fugitive slaves could cross the Hudson River.[8] New Brunswick, 'Hub City', was a main location where runaways would travel during the days of the Underground Railroad.[9] During the American Civil War, African Americans served in several all-black Union Army regiments from New Jersey.[10]

In 2008, the legislature of New Jersey passed a resolution of official apology for slavery, becoming the third state to do so.[11] Rutgers, the State University moved to rectify its past wrongs and connections to slavery during its 250th anniversary celebration in 2016.[12] Princeton University, the oldest college in the state of New Jersey, released the findings of its Princeton & Slavery Project in 2017.[13]

Colonial period

The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the trafficking of eleven African slaves to New Amsterdam, capital of the nascent province of New Netherland. They worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders.[14] It later expanded across the North River (Hudson River) to Pavonia and Communipaw, eventually becoming Bergen, where these men worked the company plantation.[14] Settlers to the area later enslaved men privately, often using them as domestic servants and laborers.[8][15] Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, who also baptized their children. While enslaved Africans could be admitted to the Church, the church itself did not prohibit their enslavement. In fact, the Church did not even find that enslavement sinful.[16] The enslaved could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours, when they earned wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell, the company relinquished enslavement, establishing early on a nucleus of free negros.[14][17]

English traders continued to traffic African slaves after they took over the colony from the Dutch in 1664 and established a proprietorship. Eager to attract more settlers and laborers to develop the colony, the proprietorship encouraged the trafficking of slaves for labor by offering settlers headrights, an award of allocations of land based on the number of workers, slaves or indentured servants, trafficked to the colony. The first African slaves to appear in English records were owned by Colonel Lewis Morris in Shrewsbury.[15] In an early attempt to encourage European settlement, the New Jersey legislature enacted a prohibitive tariff against trafficked slaves to encourage European indentured servitude.[18] When this act expired in 1721, however, the British Government and New Jersey's royal governor, countered attempts to renew it. The slave trade was a royal monopoly and had become a lucrative enterprise.[18]

The liberties of the enslaved peoples of New Jersey were formally curtailed under a law passed in 1704, a so-called 'slave code'. This code prohibited the owning of property by slaves and by free African Americans as well. In addition, it made certain actions illegal for African Americans, like staying out past curfew, that were not illegal for European Americans.[19]

Camden was a center for the importation of slaves, its ferry docks on the Delaware River across from Philadelphia acting as auction sites for the plantations in the Delaware Valley, of which Pomona Hall was one.[20]

In 2016 Rutgers University published a report Scarlet and Black recording the university's relationship with slavery.[21] In 2017 Princeton University made public the findings of the Princeton & Slavery Project, which is ongoing.[13]

Post-American Revolution

African-American slaves fought on both sides in the War for Independence. The British Crown promised slaves freedom for leaving their rebel masters to join their cause. The number of blacks in New York rose to 10,000 as slaves escaped there from both northern and southern masters after the British occupied the city. The British kept their promise and evacuated thousands of freedmen from New York, resettling 3,500 Black Loyalists in its colony of Nova Scotia and others in the Caribbean islands.[22] Colonel Tye, also known as Titus Cornelius (c. 1753–1780),[23][24] was a slave of African descent who achieved notability during the war by his leadership and fighting skills, and was one of the most effective guerrilla leaders opposing the American rebel forces in Central Jersey.[23][24]

Following the Revolutionary War in the 1780s, New Jersey initially resisted the urge to free slaves due to a desire to re-build their devastated economy.[2]: 47 According to the American historian Giles Wright, by 1790 New Jersey's enslaved population numbered approximately 14,000.[25] They were virtually all of African descent.[26] The 1790 federal census, however, recorded 11,423 slaves, 6.2 percent of the total population of 184,139.[27] In the decades before the Revolution, slaves were numerous near Perth Amboy, the primary point of entry for New Jersey, and in the eastern counties. Slaves were generally used for agricultural labor, but they also filled skilled artisan jobs in shipyards and industry in coastal cities.

Abolition of slavery

Following the Revolutionary War, New Jersey banned the importation of slaves in 1788, but at the same time forbade free blacks from elsewhere from settling in the state.[28] In the first two decades after the war many northern states made moves towards abolishing slavery, and some slaveholders independently manumitted their slaves. Some people of color left the areas where they had been enslaved and moved to more frontier areas. Since slaves were widely used in agriculture, as well as the ports, the New Jersey state legislature was the last in the North to abolish slavery, passing a law in 1804 for its gradual abolition.[29] The 1804 statute and subsequent laws freed children born after the law was passed. African Americans born to slave mothers after July 4, 1804, had to serve lengthy apprenticeships to the owners of their mothers. Women were freed at 21, but men were not emancipated until the age of 25.[30] Slaves who had been born before these laws were passed were considered, after 1846, as indentured servants who were "apprenticed for life."[31]

Although at first New Jersey allowed free people of color to vote, the legislature disfranchised them in 1807, an exclusion that lasted until 1875. By 1830 two-thirds of the slaves remaining in the North were held by masters in New Jersey, as New York had freed the last of its slaves in 1827 under gradual abolition. It was not until 1846 that New Jersey abolished slavery, but it qualified it by redefining former slaves as apprentices who were "apprenticed for life" to their masters.[28][31] Slavery did not truly end in the state until it was ended nationally in 1865 after the American Civil War and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

According to historian James Gigantino (University of Arkansas), during the early nineteenth century in New Jersey, there were more female than male slaves. After the passage of the Act of Gradual Abolition in New Jersey in 1804, a greater number of advertisements in the state for the full-title sale of female slaves of child-bearing age were published.[32] Female slaves and their reproductive capabilities were highly valuable because their children would be born as slaves for a term, even after the 1804 Act of Gradual Abolition. However, domestic skills and labor also affected the value and marketability of female slaves. By 1830, African Americans made up 6% of the total population of New Jersey. The city of New Brunswick had a large African American population at an around 11%. This added one of the reasons why New Brunswick was a favorable location for runaways, but it also made the city into a popular site for slave hunters, who wished to enforce the federal fugitive slave laws of 1850.[33] In more urban areas of the state, like New Brunswick, there were frequent advertisements for the sale of female slaves, both before and after passage of the 1804 Act of Gradual Abolition. This was because female slaves were more highly favored for domestic work, which was in greater demand in urban spaces like New Brunswick. Enslaved women, however, also performed manual labor across the state of New Jersey.[34]

Yet the Gradual Abolition Act of 1804 did not guarantee that a slave born after 1804 would gain their freedom. Slaveholders would regularly sell those slaves down south to states like Louisiana before the slaves reached manumission age.[35] By the 1830s, slavery was on the decline in New Jersey.[36]

Communities of free negros and freedmen formed at Dunkerhook in Paramus[37][38] and at the New York state line at Skunk Hollow, also called The Mountain. A founding African-American settler bought land there in 1806, and later bought more. Other families joined him, and the community continued into the twentieth century.[39] According to the historian David S. Cohen in The Ramapo Mountain People (1974), free people of color migrated from Manhattan into other parts of the frontier of northeastern New Jersey, where some intermarried and became ancestors of the Ramapo Mountain Indians.[40] (Cohen's findings have been disputed by some scholars, including Albert J. Catalano.[41])

According to Gigantino, one in ten slaves in New Jersey remained enslaved for life. Many slaveholders sold their slaves to Southern slaveholders, and displayed antipathy toward abolition.[42] He stated that about one quarter of New Jersey's African American population was forced into labor during the 1830s. Improper information regarding who was free led to it appearing as though slavery decreased more rapidly than it actually did.[43]

The Civil War

A total of 2,909 United States Colored Troops from New Jersey served in the Union Army. Because of the state's long-term apprenticeship requirements, at the close of the American Civil War, some African Americans in New Jersey remained in bondage. It was not until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1865 that the last 16 slaves in the state were freed.[6][44]

In the 1860 census, free colored persons in New Jersey numbered 25,318, about 4% of the state's population of 672,035. By 1870 the number had increased to 30,658, but they constituted a smaller percentage of the total population because of the high rate of European immigration. Overall, New Jersey's population had increased to 906,096, with nearly 200,000 European immigrants.[45]

New Jersey was slow to abolish slavery and reluctant to pass the 13th Amendment,[15] which it did in January 1866. Some of its industries, such as shoes and clothing, had strong markets in the South supplying planters for their slaves, which was probably a factor.[46]

On March 31, 1870, Thomas Mundy Peterson (1824–1904) became the first African American to vote in a New Jersey election in 63 years, since the state restricted voting to whites in 1807.[47][48][49] By then, hundreds of thousands of African Americans had already voted in southern states under Reconstruction-era state constitutions.[50]

In 1875, "Jack" Jackson, described in a newspaper as "the last slave in New Jersey,"[51] died at the age of 87 on the Smith family farm at Secaucus. Abel Smith had manumitted his slaves in 1820, but Jackson "refused to accept his liberty" and remained on the family estate until his death. By the will of the late Abel Smith, Jackson was interred in the family burial ground.[52]

Apology

In 2008, the New Jersey Legislature acknowledged the state's role in the history of slavery in the United States.[53][54]

The Legislature of the State of New Jersey expresses its profound regret for the State's role in slavery and apologizes for the wrongs inflicted by slavery and its after effects in the United States of America; expresses its deepest sympathies and solemn regrets to those who were enslaved and the descendants of those slaves, who were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States; and we encourage all citizens to remember and teach their children about the history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and modern day slavery, to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated.

In 2019, the Legislative Black Caucus initiated efforts to research the role slavery played in the state.[55]

References

1. https://www.montclair.edu/anthropology/research/slavery-in-nj/part-1/

2. Fuentes, Marisa; White, Deborah Gray, eds. (2016). Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

3. "Bergen County Slavery"

4. Kennedy, Michael V. (2003-01-01). "THE HIDDEN ECONOMY OF SLAVERY: COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL HIRING IN PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE, 1728-1800". Essays in Economic and Business History. 21 (1

5. Secret History of a Northern Slave State

6. "Interview: James Oliver Horton: Exhibit Reveals History of Slavery in New York City", PBS Newshour, 25 January 2007,

7. ""Steal Away, Steal Away ..." A Guide to the Underground Railroad in New Jersey" (PDF).

8. Karnoutsos, Carmela. "Underground Railroad". Jersey City Past and Present.

9. Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 93.

10. "Historian highlights service of NJ's black Civil War troops". Asbury Park Press.

11. "New Jersey officially apologizes for slavery - CNN.com". www.cnn.com.

12. Fuentes, Marisa; White, Deborah Grey (2016). Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 44.

13. Schuessler, Jennifer. "Princeton Digs Deep Into Its Fraught Racial History".

14. Hodges, Russel Graham (1999). "Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863". Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.

15. Shakir, Nancy. "Slavery in New Jersey". Slaveryinamerica. Archived from the original on 2003-10-17.

16. Gigantino, James (2014). The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 12, 236–237.

17. Switala, William J (2006). Underground Railroad in New York and New Jersey. Stackpole Books.

18. Moss, Simeon F. (July 1950). The Persistence of Slavery and Involuntary Servitude in a Free State (1685-1866). Vol. 35, No. 3 (Jul., 1950). The Journal of Negro History. p. 294.

19. Gigantino, James (2014). Ragged Road to Abolition. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 14.

20. "Slave Ships on the Delaware: A Video Documentary". Historiccamdencounty.com.

21. "Rutgers confronts its ties to slavery in groundbreaking report". Nj.com. 2016-11-19.

22. Nancy Shakir, "Slavery in New Jersey" Archived 2003-10-17 at archive.today, Slavery in America,

23. "Colonel Tye", Africans in America, PBS

24. Jonathan D. Sutherland, African Americans at War, ABC-CLIO, 2003,

25. "Archived copy" (PDF).

26. Lawrence Aaron, "Confronting New Jersey's slave past", Bergen Record, 10 February 2006.

27. Historical Census Browser, 1790 census

28. Slavery in the North,

29. "An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery" (15 February 1804), electronically transcribed text of act of the New Jersey State Legislature published by the New Jersey Digital Legal Library (hosted by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey).

30. Douglas Harper, "Slavery in New Jersey", Slavery in the North website, 2003,

31. "An Act to Abolish Slavery" (18 April 1846), electronically transcribed text of act of the New Jersey State Legislature published by the New Jersey Digital Legal Library (hosted by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey).Accessed 21 February 2012.

32. Gigantino, James J. II. (2014). The Ragged Road to Abolition. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 134.

33. Fuentes, Marisa J.; White, Deborah Grey (2016). Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 94.

34. "In Pressing Need of Cash: Gender, Skill, and Family Persistence in the Domestic Slave Trade". Journal of African American History. 92 (1): 30. 1 January 2007.

35. Fuentes, Marisa J.; White, Deborah Gray (2016). Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 103.

36. Fuentes, Marisa J.; White, Deborah Gray (2016). Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 105.

37. lutins, allen. "Dunkerhook: Slave Community?". Lutins.org.

38. [1]

39. Kathleen Sykes, "Skunk Hollow: History of a 19th Century Community of Free African-Americans", The Palisades Newsletter (NY), Mar 2006 - Issue 192

40. Cohen, David Steven (1974), The Ramapo Mountain People, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 74, 197,

41. Catalano, Albert J.; Plache, Matthew J. (April 30, 2006). "Opinion: The case for Ramapough tribal status". North Jersey Media Group.

42. Gigantino, James J. (2010). "Trading in Jersey Souls". Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. 77 (3): 282.

43. Gigantino, James. "The Whole North Is Not Abolitionized". Academic Search Complete.

44. According to Snell, James P. History of Sussex and Warren Counties, New Jersey, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1881). No ISBN (Pre-1964). Note: Several families in northwestern New Jersey (Sussex County) had slaves who, while legally "freed" by their owners, refused to leave their former masters.

45. Historical Census Browser, 1860 and 1870 censuses

46. New Jersey ratified the 13th Amendment on 23 January 1866, after having rejected the amendment on 16 March 1865. [2], published by the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site Interpretive Staff, National Park Service (no further authorship information available).

47. U.S. National Park Service. "Did You Know: Women and African Americans Could Vote in NJ before the 15th and 19th Amendments?".

48. "Perth Amboy Church Is 302 And Counting". New York Times. February 15, 1987. Retrieved 2010-11-27. Thomas Mundy Peterson, was a member of St. Peter's and is buried in its graveyard. He voted in the Perth Amboy mayoral election of March 31, 1870, one day after adoption of the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

49. "African-American Firsts Remembered - Newark Public Library". Npl.org.

50. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "An Assessment of Minority Voting Rights Access in the United States, 2018 Statutory Report" (PDF). Over 700,000 black citizens voted for the first time in the 1868 presidential election.

51. "Obituary Index 1874 -1882" (PDF). Belvidere Apollo/Intelligencer. p. 116.

52. ""Jack" Jackson." Hunterdon County Democrat. XXXVIII. November 30, 1875. p. 13.

53. "Assembly Concurrent Resolution 230" (PDF). New Jersey Legislature.

54. Peters, Jeremy (January 13, 2008). "A Slavery Apology, but Debate Continues". The New York Times.

55. Johnson, Brent; Coleman, Tennyson Donnie (2019-11-15). "Black N.J. leaders want to explore reparations over slavery in the state". NJ.com.

Slavery in New York and New Jersey

New England

New York and New Jersey

History of slavery in New York (state)

Dutch rule

Initial group of slaves

Slave trade

Partial and full freedom

English rule

American Revolution

Gradual abolition

Right to vote

Freedom's Journal

Involvement in the illegal slave trade

African Burial Ground

Notes

References

Further reading

History of Slavery in New Jersey

Colonial period

Post-American Revolution

Abolition of slavery

The Civil War

Apology

References