Slavery in the Middle States (NJ, NY, PA)

The Middle States—New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—had a long relationship with slavery, stretching from the early 1600s to the end of the American Civil War. As in the Chesapeake and the lower South, slavery in the Middle States existed as a labor relationship. Due to shortages of a white labor supply, farmers and businesspeople in the Middle States turned to slaves during the colonial and revolutionary periods to fulfill their burning desire for economic profit. However, in all three states, slavery existed as a substitute labor system; that is, slavery existed alongside free white labor, which farmers favored over slavery. Unlike the South, slavery in the North never developed into the predominant economic system, due to the lack of a staple crop. Without a strong economic need for slavery, the institution's slow decline in the Middle States began by the time of the Revolutionary War, and each of the three states had enacted abolition programs by 1804.

Origins of Slavery in the Middle States

The first African Americans to arrive in the Middle States came in the early seventeenth century as Dutch slaves from the West Indies. In 1626, the city of New Amsterdam (New York) was in the midst of a labor crisis due to the stagnation of immigration to the new Dutch North American colony. The economic opportunities of building a strong trading port as well as moving into the interior to trade fur with Native Americans motivated the members of the Dutch West India Company to request that a shipment of slaves bound for the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean instead be sent to New Netherland in order to stave off the labor shortage. Unlike colonial Virginia or New England, New Netherland could not attract indentured servants nor spur free migration from Europe; therefore, the Dutch needed to look toward slavery to provide them with the labor necessary for the colony to expand. Like the white Dutch settlers, the New Netherland slaves built roads for commerce, forts for defense, and cleared land for farming. Essentially, the New Netherland slaves did everything white settlers did, illustrating that even the earliest beginnings of slavery in the Middle States involved the use of slaves as a substitute labor population.

Dutch slaves spread across the Hudson River into New Jersey, where settlers used them to farm the fertile fields of northeast New Jersey. This area became heavily dominated by slave labor until the enactment of gradual abolition in the early nineteenth century. Dutch traders also spread slavery to the shores of the Delaware River, introducing slavery into Pennsylvania. Eventually, Philadelphia, Perth Amboy (in New Jersey), and New York City became important stops in the transatlantic slave trade. This link to the Atlantic world strengthened slavery in the Middle States by constantly infusing new slaves into the system.

General Slave Conditions

Slavery in the Middle States grew because of the availability of cheap land and the desire of whites to own land, which together resulted in a lack of landless white laborers. Colonists bought their own land rather than continue to work as wage laborers or as cottagers on another person's land. With more and more whites acquiring their own land to farm, any interruption in the movement of whites to the New World, such as a war or an economic boom in Europe that improved living conditions enough to discourage immigration, necessitated a switch to slave labor.

Colonists usually bought slaves who had spent time "acculturating" in the West Indies. Slaveholders in the Middle States typically did not buy slaves directly from Africa, since many slaveholders felt Africans not familiar with slavery in the New World would be dangerous and costly to maintain. Slaves mainly engaged in agricultural pursuits, but slavery in the Middle States, as in the American South, did not limit slaves to only certain occupations. Slaves frequently became helpers to their artisan masters or, in certain instances, became coopers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, carpenters, or other types of artisans in their own right. These job skills frequently made slaves more valuable. Newspapers advertised slaves who were "masters of their trades" or "a good tailor" or even as fit for "the management of shallops and other small craft," showing that slaves participated in oceangoing commerce in the Middle States as well.

JOSEPH BLOOMFIELD

The abolition of slavery in the Middle States took the efforts of politicians, religious activists, and slaves themselves. Joseph Bloomfield, governor of New Jersey and former president of the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, doubled as both politician and activist in the fight to end slavery.

Born in 1753, Bloomfield practiced law in colonial New Jersey and joined the continental army during the Revolutionary War. After military service and service as clerk of the State General Assembly, Bloomfield served as attorney general, advocating for freedom for slaves in both his official capacity as attorney general and his role as president of the state abolition society. Joining the Democratic-Republican Party, the state legislature elected him governor in 1801, a post he held until 1812. During his administration, he presided over the enactment of gradual abolition in 1804, which he called the most important act ever passed or which can ever be passed by the legislature of New Jersey in its consequences.

Bloomfield served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1817 to 1821 and died at his home in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1823.

SOURCE: New Jersey Historical Society. Edwin A. Ely Autograph Collection. Newark, NJ: Author, 1663–1810.

Slave owners also hired out slaves to various industries, other artisans, or larger farms in addition to controlling their labor for their own purposes. Owners could receive an income from their slave's labor while also retaining access to that labor during harvest or planting seasons by using the hiring-out system. The crops slaves grew in the Middle States (wheat, barley, corn, flax, and vegetables) had smaller growing and harvesting seasons than rice, cotton, or tobacco grown in the South. Whereas growing tobacco required regular cultivation and necessitated a great deal of labor, corn cultivation did not nearly need as much attention, and therefore for a large portion of the year slaves sat idle. Hiring out slaves allowed owners to find a way to increase the slaves' income-earning potential.

Although slaves in the Middle States operated very differently than those in the South, many of the same restrictive measures used in the South were replicated in the Middle States. Slave codes—laws that defined and regulated slavery—became part of the Middle States' legal system in the early 1700s. The codes delineated who qualified as a slave, established punishment (usually severe) for criminal offenses committed by slaves, and placed restrictions on slave movements and rights. Treatment of slaves was harsh and violent. Masters in the Middle States used whipping, rape, castration, and burning at the stake to instill fear in the slave population as well as enforce discipline and maintain a work system. For instance, a New York law in 1702 permitted slave owners to "punish their slaves for their crimes and offenses at their discretion, not extending to life or member" (Olson 1944, p. 147). Essentially, slaveholders could punish a slave by any means at their disposal without limitation (save causing death or severe disfigurement).

Mistreatment by their owners enticed many to rebel in a variety of ways, including through work stoppages, running away, or open revolt. Organizing open revolt was difficult in the North, since the average slaveholder had only one or two slaves. Large slaveholdings made up of multiple slaves, which created an independent slave culture in the South, did not exist in the Middle States. Since no large slaveholdings existed, slave rebellions usually took shape in the urban areas of the North, especially in New York. Two major rebellions occurred in New York City, in 1712 and 1741. On April 1, 1712, slaves burned a house and shot the whites inside when they attempted to escape, killing eight and wounding twelve. The slaves involved were found guilty and executed later that year. The Conspiracy of 1741 involved blacks setting fire to buildings in New York City, including Fort George. Several blacks and some whites were convicted and a number were burned at the stake for arson and conspiracy to revolt.

Slaves in the Middle States had a clear concept of freedom and rallied around that concept by attacking the institution of slavery through both organized and individual resistance movements. Although slaves did not have the same type of community as slaves in the South did, slaves in the Middle States did manage to form ties of both community and kinship with one another. Slaves in the Middle States formed communities by joining larger networks of slaves, instead of relying on those in close proximity. Essentially, slaves communicated with other slaves on market days, during their time off, and when they were hired out to another owner for a period of time, along with other slaves. In rural areas, these larger networks allowed for some of the same types of community empowerment that a community on a single, larger slave-holding saw. For example, slave communities in the North traded information, exchanged guidance, and traded goods, as well as planning revolts such as those seen in 1712 and 1741.

Indeed, religion was another important part of slaves' lives in the Middle States, just as in the South. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch in New York introduced slaves to the church as a key part of their community life. Slaves worshipped in Dutch churches on an almost equal basis with whites. However, more broadly, owners hesitated to introduce their slaves to Christianity, because of the fear that the Bible would teach slaves independence and instill a desire for liberation. As late as 1755, slave owners in Dover, Pennsylvania, whipped their slaves if they went to church. However, as the Great Awakening introduced slaves to a more evangelical brand of religion, slaves made religion a part of their lives and used its liberating aspects to spur on resistance as well as comfort them in times of need.

The Move toward Abolition

The outbreak of war fueled abolitionist sentiments that had languished since the mid -1700s. The power of republicanism challenged American conceptions of freedom and galvanized people to question the suitability of fighting for American freedom while at the same time denying that same freedom to another race. New Jersey's revolutionary governor, William Livingston, argued in a 1786 letter that slavery was "utterly inconsistent both with the principles of Christianity and Humanity; and in Americans who have almost idolized liberty, peculiarly odious and disgraceful" (Sedgwick 1833).

The largest group of antislavery advocates remained the Quakers, the group that had started the fight for abolition as early as the seventeenth century. Many Quakers, as New Jerseyan Samuel Allinson stated, believed that slavery "brought down divine vengeance upon a whole people until the evil has been expiated" (Samuel Allinson to Patrick Henry, October 17, 1774; in "Sundry Letters"). To avert divine retribution, Quaker activists introduced numerous bills in New Jersey and Pennsylvania that started to regulate the slave trade and the treatment of slaves within the colonies. Quakers and their allies lobbied for ending the transatlantic slave trade, improving treatment for slaves within the state, and lessening the stringent manumission requirement of posting a bond as high as 200 pounds in order to free a slave. This requirement limited many owners' ability to manumit their slaves.

The Pennsylvania state legislature acted first in the Middle States to end the institution of slavery. The influence of the Quakers coupled with the rhetoric of freedom stemming from the Revolution induced Pennsylvania to pass a gradual emancipation bill in 1780. The bill granted freedom to children born to slaves after they reached the age of twenty-eight years old. Although the power of the Revolution and Quaker support spurred on abolition, there were also other factors that made it easier to attain: Because Pennsylvania possessed a large population of wage laborers, the abolition of slavery did not hurt the state economically and therefore did not create significant opposition. However, opposition from slave-dependent landowners along the Delaware River, together with the racism of the population at large, prevented the state legislature from instituting complete abolition in 1800. Nonetheless, slavery soon died in Pennsylvania despite inaction by the state: By 1820, only 211 slaves remained, and by 1840 slavery had completely disappeared.

In New York and New Jersey, abolition did not come as easily as it did in Pennsylvania. The New York State legislature defeated two abolition laws introduced in 1784 and 1785, because Dutch farmers along the Hudson River protested that freeing their slaves would limit their economic viability. After a campaign led by Quakers and the New York Manumission Society, the state legislature passed a gradual manumission law that took effect on July 4, 1799. Any child born to a slave after July 4 would be free after serving a twenty-eight-year indenture for men and a twenty-five-year term for women. Because lawmakers did not wish to take property from their constituents without some form of compensation, the abolition program included restitution for slave owners. Finally, New York emancipated all its slaves born before July 4, 1799, as of July 4, 1827. On July 4, 1827, slavery in New York ended.

New Jersey, the last Northern state to work toward abolition, passed a gradual emancipation law effective July 4, 1804. The legislature essentially copied many of the provisions of the New York law, including the apprenticeship period and the compensation program. However, unlike New York in 1827, New Jersey never completely abolished slavery. In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment (which New Jersey initially rejected) finally ended slavery and involuntary servitude in the state.

Slave Statistics and Population

Slavery in the Middle States never reached the size or scale of slavery in the American South, but it was a significant element of colonial society. In 1770, New Yorkers held the largest number of slaves—approximately 20,000, encompassing about 12 percent of the state's total population. Most of these slaves lived either in New York City or in Long Island, on estates along the Hudson River. In 1770 New Jerseyans held approximately 8,500 slaves, encompassing about 7 percent of the state's total population, while Pennsylvanians held about 5,500 slaves or 2.3 percent of the total population.

After the Revolution, the first federal census in 1790 recorded 22,306 slaves in New York (or 6.5% of the state population), 11,423 slaves in New Jersey (6.2% of the state population), and 3,761 slaves in Pennsylvania (0.9% of the state population). In all three states, slavery extended well into the antebellum period, with the last slaves recorded in 1827 in New York, after full emancipation took effect, in 1840 in Pennsylvania, and in 1865 in New Jersey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

Hodges, Graham. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

McManus, Edgar. Black Bondage in the North. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1973.

Nash, Gary, and Jean Soderlund. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Olson, Edwin. "The Slave Code in Colonial New York." Journal of Negro History 29, no. 2 (1944): 147-165.

Sedgwick, Theodore. A Memoir of the Life of William Livingston with Extracts from His Correspondence and Notices of Various Members of His Family. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833.

"Sundry Letters between Samuel Allinson and Some of His Most Intimate Friends, between the Years 1764 and 1790." Rutgers University Archives, New Brunswick, NJ.

White, Shane. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770–1810. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.

Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

                                        James J. Gigantino II