The Ragged Road to Abolition. James J. Gigantino II
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leadership, abolitionists gathered dozens of petitions to show that whites wanted abolition. These petitions, signed mainly by society members and Quakers, called for an end to “heredity human bondage” in the state by using the “great principles of justice and truth” from the Revolution. This Enlightenment rhetoric and revolutionary ideology would ensure that “common rights and happiness” be granted to all New Jerseyans.55 On a personal level, Bloomfield firmly believed in this logic, arguing in a 1795 letter to Philadelphia merchant Samuel Coates that in a state whose laws “proclaim liberty and happiness to all her citizens,” slavery could never survive.56
Like gradual abolitionists in other states, few society members believed in black equality; racism still dominated New Jersey’s abolitionist discourse and limited actions that alleviated the social and economic rift between free blacks and whites. In some cases, the society even opposed funding programs that supported free black education and instead focused their attention solely on slavery’s destruction. For example, in 1796 the society forced its Gloucester chapter to recall funds earmarked to educate black children. Even in the society’s pleas to the legislature, it targeted only the legal institution of slavery instead of improving free black life. The society claimed its members could be “consoled with the reflection that in a course of years, slavery would cease with the lives of those who now endure it,” but few tried to advocate for either immediate abolition or for a wholesale change in the way that whites saw blacks. Indeed, on the eve of gradual abolition, society president Griffith claimed that the phrase “in New Jersey, no man is born a slave” should be the mantra of abolitionists. The society’s primary goal remained gradual legal abolition.57
Overall, the society was largely ineffective at advancing abolition statewide. In 1798, it tabled action on several petitions and court cases due to the “the scattered situation of the Society and the extreme difficulty of forming efficient cooperation in those parts of the state where the necessity is the greatest.” Three years later, in 1801, the lack of abolitionist support forced Bloomfield to report to the National Convention of Abolition Societies that “the scattered situation of this Society occasions many embarrassments and difficulties . . . [as] members . . . are often so far apart as to render it impracticable for them” to work together. Thus, the society was never as powerful as societies in Pennsylvania or New York. Jersey abolitionists struggled to coordinate branches across the state without a large commercial center to organize around. The society also received little support from residents in East Jersey, where the majority of the slaves lived and legal cases were heard. The dearth of active East Jersey members and the overabundance of members who happily talked of abolition in counties with few slaves caused difficulty in actually ensuring that the society’s efforts reached those who needed them the most.58
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Though white abolitionists believed their efforts had made great strides, New Jersey’s slaves and free blacks worked equally hard to negotiate for the liberties that they had heard about since the first dissent arose between Great Britain and the colonies. In the Mid-Atlantic, blacks published several freedom petitions, following the lead of New England blacks. For example, in 1800 Philadelphia free blacks wrote to congressional leaders to highlight the Revolutionary antecedents of abolition, claiming that abolition shared much in common with “our struggle with Great Britain for that natural independence to which we conceived ourselves entitled.”59 Similarly, three Connecticut slaves argued in 1797 that they were “in a much worse situation than we were in before the war,” even though Americans had defeated “the tyrant king of Great Britain” who “assumed the right of depriving all the Americans of their liberty!”60
In New Jersey, Revolutionary ideas encouraged slaves to actively seek out freedom themselves, most commonly by running away. However, absconding declined from its high watermark during the Revolution since slavery’s growth in East Jersey made community and family connections easier. In Bergen County, for example, the average distance between slave-holdings dropped from 3 to 1.5 miles by 1800, which allowed slaves to marry in greater numbers and create families that tied them to their local communities. As opportunity and desire declined, New Jersey newspapers printed 40 percent fewer runaway advertisements between 1784 and 1803 than during the Revolution, averaging 5.8 advertisements per year. Young male slaves continued to make up the majority of runaways, with a median age of twenty-five years. These fugitives deprived Jersey slaveholders of essential laborers to repair the state’s economy after the Revolution. As expected, most runaways (86 percent) came from East Jersey, though even this number represents a fraction of the likely total number. Circumstantial evidence, including Niemcewicz’s account of the Elizabethtown jail teaming with runaway slaves in a year in which only one fugitive advertisement appeared, indicates that runaways remained somewhat prevalent in the late eighteenth century.61
Though slower than during the Revolution, abolitionist activity in the 1790s encouraged slaves to abscond from their masters. One such slave, James Alford, left his master’s Rahway farm in 1794 and headed toward Pennsylvania because, as he described years later, he had heard a divine voice that told him he would soon be free if he sought assistance from local Quakers. Sneaking off the farm to the local Quaker Meeting House, Alford met several abolitionists who taught him how to read and write. He discussed with them at length the divine voice he had heard. After his escape, Alford’s master accused the local Quakers of encouraging him to flee.62
Abolitionism exacerbated the long-held white fear of slave rebellion, leading some masters to negotiate with their slaves to stave off revolt. Newspapers reported vivid firsthand accounts of the bloody rebellion in Saint-Domingue while refugees and their slaves simultaneously spread news of the revolt to American ports from Maine to Georgia. Jersey abolitionists claimed that Francophone settlers and their slaves had migrated to Philadelphia in droves, many of whom eventually settled in West Jersey and dramatically increased the region’s slave population. In Nottingham, for instance, almost half of the city’s forty-five slaves belonged to new French settlers.63 Likewise Susanna Emlen, writing to William Dillwyn in 1792, reported on “a new class of inhabitants in Burlington—a number of those unfortunate Islanders whose slaves have risen and made so much disturbance and valuable effects.” Emlen was surprised by both the large number of new slaves and that many of them had actually helped save their masters’ lives during the rebellion. However, she believed few could “wonder [why] their slaves should demand and forcibly take what had so cruelly been withheld from them.”64
The same almanacs and periodical literature that had encouraged white New Jerseyans to see blacks as inferior and animalistic now began to disparage the Saint-Domingue rebels. Bryan Edwards’s Historical Survey of the French Colony of St. Domingo pointedly accused abolitionists of starting the revolt. New Jerseyans, from their Atlantic connections, learned much from Edwards’s book about the dangers of slavery. They sought to protect themselves from a similar rebellion. In 1794, even local abolitionists warned that a general insurrection much like that of Saint-Domingue could occur if abolition did not begin soon.65
To prevent rebellion, both New York and New Jersey further limited slave movement and communication, and curtailed activities conducted without white supervision. New York banned gambling and the use of lanterns to limit arson, while Newark prevented slaves from meeting together or leaving their masters’ home after ten o’clock at night. Despite these regulations, the mid-1790s saw mysterious fires break out up and down the Atlantic coast, which exacerbated worries of slave revolt. In New Jersey, investigators believed that slaves in Newark and Elizabeth had planned to set fire to the two towns and launch a massive uprising. Other potential revolts, such as when Middlesex County executed three slaves for planning an uprising, upset already anxiety-ridden New Jerseyans.66
In addition to the threat of slave revolt, masters faced the possibility that their own slaves could injure them or damage their property. For example, Margaret, a mother of five, burned down her New Barbados master’s barn, while Nance poisoned her Sussex County mistress’s coffee with arsenic, and Sam, a slave owned by Newark’s Caleb Hetfield, stood accused of raping Mary Russel in 1785.67 Crimes like these led Bergen slaveholders to complain of the “many atrocities, acts of burglary, arson, robbery and larceny which have been committed by slaves in this County and this frequent