New Jersey

By: Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

New Jersey

With one of the most diverse populations and economies in colonial America, New Jersey depended on slave labor from its origins. During the earliest days of settlement enslaved African Americans were present in Pavonia (later Jersey City), on Burlington Island in the Delaware River, and possibly in what became Sussex County. The New Sweden settlement on the Delaware River was also home to a number of enslaved Africans. By the 1650s freed people from Manhattan Island began moving into Bergen County. After the English took over the region in 1664, the colony was split into eastern and western parts, with slavery developing differently in the two.

Slavery in Colonial East Jersey

Among the founders of East Jersey's first large-scale settlements in the 1680s were several young sons of Barbadian planters; these immigrants brought teams of slaves with them to construct plantations. Among the important Barbadian settlers in East Jersey were Lewis Morris Jr., who operated a forge and mill in Monmouth County that employed over sixty slaves, and William Sandford and Nathaniel Kingsland, who purchased sizable estates in Bergen County. Such estates, with politically powerful owners, were few. More common in East Jersey were small-farm slaveholdings. The colony's diverse ethnic and religious groups—including English Congregationalists and Quakers, the Dutch Reformed Church, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, and scattered other sects—generally lived on smaller farms, with families often grouping together.

In the late seventeenth century members of all of these faiths and ethnicities sold and owned slaves. Many farmers owned from one to five slaves and practiced a four-crop system of grains, also harvesting fruits and vegetables and reserving some meadowlands for animals and hay. Fishing and milling brought in additional revenue. The proliferation of small farms created a class of slaves who performed multiple tasks and could easily be exchanged from farm to farm or from town to town; white New Jerseyans engaged in an active internal slave trade and were eager participants in the Atlantic slave trade. By 1715 about fifteen hundred African Americans lived in the colony.

New Jersey's assembly enacted a slave code in 1704. Among the first clauses was the statement “Baptism does not disturb a slave's civil condition,” alluding to the efforts of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This missionary wing of the Church of England fared poorly in rural New Jersey, inspiring only a few converts in Monmouth County. Protestant denominations in East Jersey generally avoided acculturating Africans into European religions or schools.

As the colony grew, African American labor proved essential. By 1726 nearly 2,000 enslaved people lived in East Jersey. The counties of Bergen, with 492, and Monmouth, with 433, had the largest holdings. The census in 1745 indicated a sharp increase to over 3,100 enslaved people, amounting to over 10 percent of the region's population. Young males predominated, with sex ratios of over two to one in Monmouth and three to two in Bergen. Slave marriage was not legal in East Jersey; couples were often separated and had to travel significant distances to visit each other. Polygamy was not uncommon. Such conditions exacerbated the instability and turbulence of slave life. No further censuses were taken in East Jersey during the colonial period, but the steady growth of the slave trade, largely conducted in Perth Amboy or in neighboring New York City, brought the estimated slave population in East Jersey to 5,000 on the eve of the American Revolution. Despite warnings from the legislature and the ominous number of runaways, East Jersey continued to develop into a slave society.

White colonial residents of East Jersey proved largely indifferent to the conditions of slaves; freedom for most blacks was a distant chimera. Accordingly, a rugged slave culture developed. Working continually in the rural agricultural economy during the day, young African- and American-born blacks clustered together for nightly frolics at which they drank and gambled, betting on both games of chance and blood sports such as cockfighting. Such frolics occasionally developed into more serious events. In Somerset County in 1734 white authorities suppressed an alleged plot by enslaved blacks to “rise at Midnight, Cut the throat of their masters and Sons,” and then rape the women the next day; the slaves in question had purportedly planned to escape to New France (Canada). In the 1740s and 1750s other incidents occurred in which slaves murdered masters with axes, poisoned them, or burned their homes.

Whites responded to slave crimes with barbaric public executions, often held before hundreds of witnesses of different races. These punishments were intended to cow the enslaved population—a tactic that seemed to fail. With increasing frequency dissatisfied slaves fled to freedom either in New England or New France or aboard seagoing ships; masters were rarely able to catch them. On the eve of the American Revolution enslaved young men seemed prepared to make a move, holding frequent meetings by night. Worried masters sought protection from the colonial militia.

Quaker Influence in West Jersey

The Society of Friends dominated West Jersey's settlement. Quakers initially embraced slavery and were active participants in the Atlantic slave trade though the port of Philadelphia. In the late seventeenth century, 40 percent of Friends in Burlington County and 66 percent in Gloucester and Salem counties owned slaves. In the first quarter of the eighteenth century the percentage in Burlington rose to 50, and that in Gloucester and Salem rose to 75. Thereafter, Quaker ownership of slaves in these West Jersey counties sharply declined. In Gloucester and Salem counties, the percentage of slave owners among Quakers had fallen to 8 by the American Revolution.

The reason for the drop in slave ownership was the rise of antislavery sentiment within the Society of Friends. Beginning with the New Jerseyans Benjamin Lay and Ralph Sandiford and culminating with the influential John Woolman in the 1750s, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, which incorporated parts of East Jersey, determined to end slave ownership among Quakers. Using church mandates and group persuasion, the Quakers induced many members to free their slaves, either immediately or eventually. Most owners agreed to delayed manumission and were still able to work their slaves for much of their lives.

The Society of Friends was less successful at stimulating abolition in the more conservative New York Yearly Meeting, which incorporated much of East Jersey. Even the threat of excommunication could not sway John Corlies of Shrewsbury, for example. When his monthly meeting tried in 1775 to persuade him to free his chattel, Corlies angrily refused. Listening intently was a twenty-one-year-old farmhand named Titus. After contemplating the discussion, Titus ran away to join the British army and later returned as the fearsome Colonel Tye, the scourge of slaveholders and a hero among black Loyalists during the American Revolution.

Titus was hardly the only enslaved New Jerseyan to engage in activity during the American Revolution. The colony was the cockpit of the war; the Patriot and King's armies marched back and forth across it, leaving much of the region as a neutral zone in which neither side dominated. Taking advantage of the chaos of the war, at least five hundred African Americans from New Jersey quit their masters and fled to New York for safety and freedom behind British lines. Those hundreds are known because they survived the conflict and departed with the British Loyalists for Nova Scotia, London, or Germany—most as free people, some as slaves. Many others, including Colonel Tye, were killed in raids around the Jersey countryside or in major battles.

Although most African Americans from New Jersey who fought in the war sided with the British, others enlisted in the Continental army or in county militias. Many of these enlistees were acting as substitutes for their masters, agreeing to fight for freedom on their behalf. A few free blacks, such as the religious leader Peter Williams Sr., chose the Patriot cause of their own volition.

Overall, African Americans could expect little advocacy for African American liberty from New Jersey Patriots. In 1777 the governor William Livingston broke off talks on abolition with the prominent Quaker attorney Samuel Allinson. Mobs shouted down the Presbyterian minister Jacob Green of Hanover when he reproached the hypocrisy of the American positions on freedom for whites and slavery for blacks. Even Quaker manumissions dropped off during the war. Meanwhile, raids by Colonel Tye and other black Loyalists continued to harrow the American side.

Gradual Emancipation in Postwar New Jersey

Following the war, Patriots in New Jersey did not forget the infidelity of local African Americans. Many whites viewed the migration of black Loyalists to Nova Scotia as a matter of lost property and joined other Americans in clamoring for compensation. Financial losses, fear of uprisings, and emerging racism hampered the efforts of the New Jersey Society for the Abolition of Slavery, a group composed largely of Quakers and Anglicans (who became Episcopalians when the American denomination separated from the British parent church).

Other northern states, including neighboring Pennsylvania, had already pushed toward the eventual abolition of slavery. In New Jersey the debate over gradual emancipation took two decades to coalesce into an agreement; gradual emancipation took effect on 4 July 1804. Blacks born before that date were slaves for life, while men born thereafter had to serve masters for twenty-five years, women for twenty-one. The terms of the law allowed masters to effectively use up the work lives of most blacks, for whom the average life span was thirty-five. Even so, many masters objected; the issue of owner compensation was the primary sticking point. In time the state legislature worked out a plan under which masters would be compensated for guarding newly freed infant blacks. This barely disguised bribe nearly bankrupted the state before it was retracted in 1808. Amazingly, masters in Bergen County sent petition after petition to the state government from 1804 to 1809 seeking reversal of the entire law, claiming it revoked rights fought for in the Revolution.

Bergen County's Dutch and Huguenot slave masters were among the most recalcitrant in the state. In the years following the Revolution, African Americans gained personal freedom through agreements with their masters, with legal assistance from the New Jersey Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and by simple escape. In county after county, flight resulted in more free blacks than legal manumission.

The 1810 census demonstrated ethnicity's effect on slavery. In Dutch-dominated Bergen County, twenty-two hundred of three thousand African Americans were still enslaved; the ratio remained similar through 1830. In English counties where Quaker influence was strong, slavery was becoming marginalized in 1810 and was nearly extinct by 1830. In West Jersey the demise of slavery was nearly complete by 1810.

Freedom did not equate with prosperity for African Americans in New Jersey. Living in a rural society, few could purchase or secure loans to obtain land. Free blacks predominantly became cottagers, renting land and tools from former masters. Over time the African Methodist Episcopal Church made inroads into New Jersey. In counties such as Monmouth with sizable English populations, by 1830 free blacks were becoming freeholders of land and creating an independent black community. In Bergen County, on the other hand, blacks remained largely impoverished; younger people sought work in New York City or to the west. After passing the gradual emancipation act in 1804, white New Jerseyans strove to deny blacks civil rights. The American Colonization Society received great support among white residents for its plan to recruit free blacks to settle in Africa.

The antislavery movement in New Jersey was slow to develop, not becoming potent until the late antebellum period. Only in the West Jersey counties where the Underground Railroad was strong were African Americans able to battle successfully for their rights and against southern slavery. Overall, the shadow of slavery loomed large over New Jersey throughout the early nineteenth century.

African Americans in New Jersey after 1830

Unlike neighboring New York, which ended slavery in 1827, or Pennsylvania, where slavery ended in 1780, the “peculiar institution” lived on in New Jersey long after the advent of gradual emancipation in 1804. White slave masters, particularly in the rural, agricultural counties dominated by the Dutch and Huguenots, were determined to extract every day of the twenty years and more that newborn blacks “owed” to their masters. Enslaved people in New Jersey formed a critical labor pool and made up large percentages of movable property. Until the practice was halted in the early 1820s, masters made profits selling infant blacks to the southern states, negating any chance they would ever be free. Underground Railroad conductors learned to shy away from the Garden State with the exception of Quaker counties close to Philadelphia. Further east and north, young whites were eager to capture and return fugitive blacks for sizable rewards. Dismayingly, advertisements for runaways continued to be published in New Jersey newspapers into the 1850s. Until the Civil War, the time owed by slaves until their gradual emancipation was bought and sold, bequeathed, and used as collateral for mortgages. As late as 1830, more than 1,600 people were still enslaved in the five counties (Bergen, Essex, Middlesex, Monmouth and Somerset) known as East New Jersey. Even after state law converted aged slaves to lifetime apprentices in 1846, over 160 slaves still lived in those counties in 1850 and eighteen slaves remained in the state in 1860. Free blacks in rural counties found liberty hard-won. Former masters refused to make any reparations or help blacks start a new life economically or socially, barred African Americans from white churches, and limited assistance to those freedpeople willing to leave via the African Colonization Society. This organization started in New Jersey and all white congregations except the Society of Friends (Quakers) backed it fully.

Despite the rise of white racism and leftover anger from slavery, blacks in New Jersey eked out a precarious existence as cottagers who worked as sharecroppers, small-farmers, mill workers, and hired hands. Many left the countryside for the cities. Rural community life centered on the Baptist and AME Zion churches that spread rapidly around the state in the 1830s. By the 1840s black militants attacking slavery and demanding improved civil rights became more common. Black abolitionists in Burlington and Newark presented antislavery resolutions at a meeting in 1841, continued to meet over the next decade, and protested their disfranchisement to the state senate and house in 1849. The black leader John S. Rock spearheaded the drive for the ballot in the 1850s.

Blacks in the state supported the Union effort in the Civil War first by joining the navy; later over three thousand New Jersey blacks enlisted in the army. Although white New Jersey newspapers derided the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks celebrated it. New Jersey lawmakers and voters opposed President Abraham Lincoln in two elections and voted against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Only with the Thirteenth Amendment was slavery finally ended in the state. On 31 March 1870 Thomas Mundy Peterson became the first black in the state to vote under the protection of the Fifteenth Amendment. Within a year, a black man served on a jury, another state first. Newark desegregated its public schools in 1872, and in 1875 the term “white” was removed from the state constitution. Reverend Jeremiah H. Pierce of Burlington won a key school segregation case before the U.S. Supreme Court the same year.

Those happy achievements became distant memories after the Great Compromise ended Reconstruction in 1877. New Jersey, southern in many aspects, also retreated from its momentary promise of racial equality. Key black leaders such as Dr. James Still adopted the accommodationist approach of Booker T. Washington and advised blacks to stay in the countryside and avoid the cities. Unlike Washington, however, Still argued that segregation was contrary to the interests of both races.

New Jersey's black population grew only slightly between 1830 and 1860, rising from 20,000 to 25,000, a slight increase that actually represented a sharp decline in the percentage of blacks among the state's population. The state's total population was over 900,000 by 1860. Between 1870 and 1900, however, the number of the state's black residents soared from 25,000 to over 89,000; regardless, this was still a tiny fraction of the total state population of 2.5 million. Much of the population surge among African Americans was fueled by migration from the south; by 1910, over 58 percent of the state's black residents were born elsewhere. A second major demographic change was the move to the cities of Newark, Camden, Atlantic City, and the industrial cities of Elizabeth, Paterson, and Jersey City. By 1910 over 75 percent of the state's blacks lived in cities, a full reversal in fifty years. Over ten thousand blacks lived in Newark alone in 1910. Black cultural institutions including churches, newspapers, fraternal orders, and women's clubs all jumped in size and influence in the late nineteenth century. Even though economically and politically New Jersey blacks had limited power, their numbers set the stage for increased influence in the twentieth century.

See also African Methodist Episcopal Church; American Colonization Society; Black Loyalists; Colonel Tye; Cottagers; Emancipation, Gradual; Episcopalians (Anglicans) and African Americans; New York City; New York, Colony and State; Pennsylvania; Slavery: Mid-Atlantic; Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; Society of Friends (Quakers) and African Americans; Violence against African Americans; Williams, Peter, Sr.; and Woolman, John.

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