The Ragged Road to Abolition. James J. Gigantino II
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to Washington’s complaints about the removal of former American slaves by claiming that he had “no right . . . to prevent their going to any part of the world they thought proper” as he had found many of them living free when he arrived in New York.52 Therefore, any slave who had absconded to New York before Carleton had assumed command, and many more who had achieved freedom since then, could leave New York unimpeded. British Prime Minister Lord North affirmed Carleton’s interpretation and extended that logic when he wrote in August 1783 that those blacks who had entered British lines before the “execution of the preliminaries of peace” should be able to leave as freed people, leading hundreds of former slaves to board British evacuation ships.53
The British decision to remove former slaves from New York, Charleston, and other British-controlled territory angered those New Jerseyans who had seen their property abscond to the British. American commissioners responsible for upholding the 1783 Paris Peace Treaty vehemently protested the decision as a violation of the treaty’s seventh article, which prohibited the British from carrying away blacks from the United States. Three commissioners wrote to Carleton in June 1783 decrying the presence of fourteen ships bound for Nova Scotia that contained “upwards of one hundred negroes, seventy three of which appeared to be the property of American subjects.”54 The commissioners considered the sailing of these ships an infraction of the Paris Treaty, a point reiterated in a May 1783 meeting in Newark. The meeting of patriot slaveholders crafted several resolutions published in local newspapers and sent to Carleton, which claimed that since Great Britain had not complied with the treaty’s provisions regarding slaves, the United States should not implement the fourth article, which mandated the full repayment of lawful debts owed to British creditors and the fifth article, which promised to restore confiscated loyalist estates.55 Carleton linked the “circumstances of additional rage” that Americans had displayed by stripping loyalists of their lives and property with the increased discontent over treaty violations concerning slaves, one that he feared “will probably in the same narrow spirit be adopted by others.”56
As Carleton predicted, arguments against removal surfaced in other meetings across New Jersey that questioned the commitment of both the British and American governments to the Paris Treaty with respect to slaves. In a second Essex County meeting, ninety residents claimed that the British had not done enough “to restore property found within their lines” and refused permission for Americans to attempt to secure ownership of their slaves individually. Many Jersey masters, without a system to recapture fugitives, saw their property leave New York for free lives elsewhere. One such Elizabethtown native, Sarah Haviland, complained to the American treaty commissioners that loyalists had forcibly taken her two male slaves, Jacob and Joe, to Staten Island. Both would soon leave the city bound for Nova Scotia as Haviland, a seventy-year-old widow, could not recapture them herself nor could she rely on any other means to assist her.57
Unfortunately for Haviland and other former masters, the British routinely defended escaped slaves who lived in New York. In one case, Constable Thomas Willis suffered fines and exile from the city for helping return escaped slave Caesar to Elizabethtown.58 Dinah Archey, a runaway living in New York, hoped for a similar defense when her master, William Fancey, attempted to seize her in 1783. She requested protection from Carleton, claiming that she had answered Howe’s Proclamation and entered New York five years earlier.59 Likewise, New Yorkers Jacob Duyree, Adam Todd, and Fredrick Fighleman endured a British trial in June 1783 for trying to carry off Francis Griffin, a freed black under British protection. In this case, Duyree claimed that he had found Griffin, his former slave who had fled to New York City. Griffin had agreed to travel with Duyree up the Hudson River back to his home to help his former master transport flour to New York City and to reconnect with his wife, who remained Duyree’s slave. Griffin secured a pass from the office of police, which, in his mind, allowed him to return unimpeded to New York because he had qualified for freedom under the British proclamation. Once close to the Hudson River, Duyree and his co-defendants forced Griffin into “a cart with a rope about his neck” and loaded him onto a sloop near Dean’s Wharf. Luckily for Griffin, Hessian soldiers boarded his former master’s ship, arrested Duyree, and freed him. After a lengthy trial, a court found Duyree guilty of trying to reenslave Griffin, fined him fifty guineas to be directed to “the poor and sick Negroes who have taken protection under the British government,” and expelled him from British territory.60
The British, attuned to the unpopularity and potential ramifications of their decision to remove former American slaves from New York, agreed to record information on each African American who left on British ships in 1783. The Book of Negroes contains over three thousand names, including at least 175 ex-slaves from New Jersey. Of those, some like Joseph and Betsey Collins of Hackensack ran away together from their separate masters in 1779. Others like Polly of Burlington came to New York in 1776 in search of greater economic opportunities than she could have attained with the Patriots. In New York, Polly met her husband, Job Allen, a former slave from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and together they had two small children before leaving for a new life in Nova Scotia.61
This exodus of blacks to Canada, Britain, and eventually Sierra Leone represented a powerful step in the development of black freedom, raised significant ire among Jersey masters interested in sustaining slavery, and proved important in delaying abolition. Although those who left represented a small percentage of New Jersey’s total slave population, others likely hid their identities as former slaves or possibly escaped via other ports within the colonies. Detailed records remain for at least two of these men, Anthony Smithers and John Baptist, both of whom filed claims for their service with the Loyalist Claims Commission but do not appear in the Book of Negroes. Smithers claimed that he lived as a free black man in Gloucester County, where he owned fourteen acres of land and valued his property at 720 pounds. He reported that he had joined the British army during its occupation of Philadelphia. Likewise, Baptist, also from Gloucester, testified that he joined the British army in Philadelphia as a freeman. He had lived with his sister on three acres of land and held an estate worth 675 pounds.62
The commission ruled both Baptist’s and Smithers’s claims invalid, since they shared some key similarities, especially the certification of the claim by the same two men, John Williams and Thomas Watkins. The commission knew that Williams and Watkins lodged several blacks in London and helped them file claims. Dozens of former American slaves ended their military careers starving in the city’s streets. Both Baptist and Smithers likely had participated in an elaborate fraud led by Williams and Watkins in September 1783. All of the claims submitted by black men that month had been certified by the duo and provided incredibly similar information with little more than the name and some personal information altered. These two claims, like those of other former American slaves, represent the difficulties ex-slaves had even after they had gained freedom. These men became destitute and desperate. Their condition led to an even greater diaspora of former American slaves as they left the difficult streets of London for Sierra Leone or as criminals to the Botany Bay Colony in Australia.63
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For white New Jerseyans, runaway slaves not only threatened wealth and status, but more important, stoked preexisting fears of slave rebellion. After the several slave conspiracies during the colonial period, Jersey whites had highly regulated slave movement, deprived slaves of the ability to own property or sell goods to whites, and prohibited slaves from frequenting taverns, possessing liquor, carrying firearms, or congregating at night. These new regulations, in full effect during the Revolution, resulted in harsher punishments for slaves who committed crimes against whites and further vigilance by whites trying to protect themselves. For example, in 1750 Perth Amboy authorities burned two slaves at the stake for murdering their mistress, which city leaders required that all Perth Amboy slaves attend as a warning against future transgressions.64
The anti-abolition petitions written before the Revolution had repeatedly warned of the death and destruction that would result from black savagery. These beliefs took on some basis in reality for many slave masters when fear of black revolt came alive in 1772 as, in the midst of abolitionist discussions, Somerset County slaveholders learned that their slaves had congregated in mass meetings at night to discuss freedom. Masters in Somerset had feared just such discontent as they had repeatedly observed