The Ragged Road to Abolition. James J. Gigantino II
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for the murder of Cornelius Nissee of Bergen County. The nine defendants all served as members of British militia units based in Bergen Neck. Major Thomas Grant, who commanded the Refugee Corps at Bergen Neck, testified that these soldiers operated independently of whites in certain circumstances. William Grant, one of the men on trial, confessed that a former slave named Sisco, whom they called Colonel, advocated that the group should “go out . . . to take a rebel.” The nine left their camp, seized two Bergen residents and marched them a few miles before releasing one. Sisco ordered the group to shoot the other, Nissee, at which time Grant objected. Another prisoner, Caesar Totten, stepped in and shot him in the chest while a second shot came from Daniel Massis’s gun. The group then took Nissee’s money, clothing, and shoes, hid the body with branches and leaves, and traveled back to their camp.83
After further investigation, British officers discovered that one of the ex-slaves knew why the group selected Nissee to execute—he had been a fellow soldier’s former owner. Harry Scobey, also accused of capital murder, had been Nissee’s slave before he absconded to the British. According to the investigating officer, Scobey had been angry with Nissee because he had sold his wife out of New Jersey. For the British, the case hinged on if Scobey had been present at the killing or if he had motivated the men to search for his former master. In its decision, the court affirmed that Scobey and four other defendants either had not been at the scene of the crime or had not encouraged it. Four others, however, received death sentences for Nissee’s murder. On a practical level, even though Scobey did not actively attempt to seek out his former master, it is of particular interest because the act of ex-slaves murdering slaveholders increased concern among Jersey whites that violence from blacks in British employ would affect slavery’s operation.84
These vivid examples of former slaves conspiring to exert power over white New Jerseyans, especially their former masters, stoked white concerns across the state that the British were actively fomenting a race war. Colonel Tye, or Titus, a slave from Colts Neck in Monmouth County, became the prime example of these fears after he absconded from his master the day after Lord Dunmore promised freedom to Virginia slaves. Even though he did not yet know of Dunmore’s Proclamation, Titus believed that the British would free him from slavery. Once the British occupied New York, Titus joined the British army like so many others who had fled their patriot masters. He returned to New Jersey as Colonel Tye and fought with British forces at the Battle of Monmouth. In 1778 and 1779, Tye led a band of mostly black guerrilla fighters who operated out of a base called Refugeetown on British controlled Sandy Hook. Tye and his men attacked wealthy slaveholding patriots, burned houses, seized guns, and foraged for food and supplies in order to disrupt patriot activities and maintain the British war machine. In one 1780 engagement, Tye led a biracial group of thirty blacks, twenty white loyalists, and thirty-two Queen’s Rangers to capture leading Monmouth County patriot Barnes Smock. In addition to Smock, the party took twelve other Monmouth patriots prisoner, destroyed one cannon, captured two artillery horses, and burned several patriot homes. In his report of the raid to Governor Livingston, New Jersey militia officer David Forman pleaded with him to take into “account of our other numerous distresses” and send additional troops to protect the region.85
Monmouth County residents decried the attacks by their former slaves and requested emergency assistance from Governor Livingston. The county had already been devastated by the early years of the war and was even more battered after the Battle of Monmouth. John Fell, a delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote to Robert Morris that Monmouth County had been ravaged by the war “as bad as Bergen,” the county that bore much of the blunt of British raiding parties. Fell further relayed the story of a relative whose slave escaped from her Monmouth house. This slave, Fell claimed, “makes the fifth Negroe had gone to the enemy and has besides robbed the house.”86 After the attacks by Colonel Tye, the county residents claimed that “it is not possible . . . to prevent the frequent ravages of the enemy . . . they have been in Shrewsbury twice since” the last petition.87
In response to the distress caused by these former slaves, Livingston declared martial law and sent 210 men from Hunterdon and Burlington to Monmouth to defend against Tye.88 However, during the summer of 1780, Tye continued to engage Monmouth County patriots and in September 1780 made his most dramatic attack, attempting to capture Monmouth militia officer Joshua Huddy. After a fierce two-hour battle in Toms River, he ultimately failed. Huddy escaped (though loyalists, including elements of Tye’s unit, eventually captured and hanged him on a Monmouth County beach) and Tye and his soldiers returned to their base on Sandy Hook. Tye suffered a minor bullet wound to the wrist in the battle. Lacking appropriate medical treatment, the wound became infected and Tye died of lockjaw a few days after the failed raid.89
Tye, as leader of the Sandy Hook unit, had done much to bring fear and destruction to the county where he had toiled as a slave. His fellow ex-slaves continued to inspire fear after his death, where, led by ex-slave Colonel Stephen Blucke, they persisted in raiding patriot targets. In 1782, for example, forty whites and forty blacks under Blucke attacked the salt works at Forked River and raided nearby homes. These black troops continued operations until 1783 when the Black Brigade became the last British unit to evacuate New York.90
The attacks of Colonel Tye and the black guerrilla fighters from Refugeetown instilled genuine fear among white slaveholders throughout New Jersey and destabilized the racial order. They wondered that if Tye could be so destructive against his former owners, how their slaves would act if they gained freedom. While the destructive impact of the war definitely slowed the path toward abolition, the fear of black revolt and the images of black violence against whites caused many to question if abolitionism, making steady progress in Pennsylvania and New England, was right for New Jersey. Fear of the consequences of abolition, the violence MacWhorter saw in Newark, and the attacks Colonel Tye executed in Monmouth helped stymie efforts to extend the Revolution’s rhetoric of freedom to those still held in bondage.
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As opposed to the promises of the king’s army, service with Continental forces never guaranteed freedom since Americans hoped to reinforce the institution, not destroy it by freeing too many slaves. New Jersey, like most states, did not allow slaves or freed blacks to join the militia, thereby reinforcing the state’s existing racial boundaries. George Washington purged his army of all blacks only five days after Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation, fearing that the enlistment of blacks would “render slavery more irksome to those who remain in it” because black troops might lead an uncontrollable liberation movement. In a society that continually dreaded slave revolt, Washington’s call for limitations on black enlistment seemed logical and comforting to many whites who feared armed slaves.91
By early 1776, however, Washington faced a manpower shortage and began to allow free blacks and slaves to serve, most notably in Rhode Island. Washington himself remained hesitant about their enlistment, especially in South Carolina and Georgia. The lack of strong support from Washington led both states to use slaves not as soldiers but as bounties. In the last four years of the war especially, South Carolinians used slaves as an enlistment bonus for white soldiers. However, South Carolina general and politician John Laurens believed that even this generous bounty would prove futile as most eligible men had already joined the military.92 Instead, James Madison pondered if it would be more expedient “to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks themselves” since enlisting blacks would “certainly be more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never to be lost sight of in a contest for liberty.”93
In some commanders’ minds, black troops had an important role to play in the American military: as foils against black British troops. In New Jersey, for example, Governor Livingston asked Washington in 1777 that if nothing else could restrain the barbarity of the British who ravaged the state the preceding year, “it may not be improper to let loose upon them a few of General Stephen’s tawny Yagers, the only Americans that can match them in their bloody work.” The men Livingston referred to, black soldiers serving in Major General Adam Stephen’s Virginia brigade, could, in Livingston’s opinion, fight the black British troops on their own terms because of their perceived inherent barbarity.94 In the same way, General Anthony Wayne advocated in 1782 that Georgia enlist black troops as “a matter of necessity,” since the