New Jersey Anglicans and Slavery in the Colonial Period – A Brief Sketch

Summary: The Anglican Church in Colonial New Jersey supported and sought to benefit from slavery. Many wealthy Anglicans were prolific enslavers and used their financial gains from enslaved labor to establish churches. Many New Jersey priests enslaved Blacks as well. The S.P.G. funding for priest salaries in New Jersey was derived in part from the profits of its Codrington Plantation in Barbados. And while the Anglican church did teach and baptize some Blacks enslaved by Anglican parishioners, for the most part field hands were excluded, Blacks were not treated as equals, and they were typically segregated in worship.

New Jersey Anglicans and Slavery in the Colonial Period: A Brief Sketch

In general, the relation of the Anglican Church to slavery in New Jersey during the colonial era was a product of the Church as an arm of the state. Of course, the Church of England was never formally established in New Jersey, but her authorities and adherents were acculturated to her operation as a support to the Crown and Crown policies. Rather than a possible force for significant moral accountability in the direction of political power, church authorities viewed the role of the Church as bringing morality and order, in addition (of course) to spiritual nourishment, to the people. As such, slavery was generally viewed as a scheme that prospered the state,[1] its power and authority, and her most faithful subjects – a state of affairs that most Anglicans either viewed as salutary, or with which they were entirely willing to cooperate.

Lewis Morris, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

            The earliest prominent lay booster of the Anglican Church in New Jersey was Lewis Morris. He was likely named for his uncle, who had moved to the American colonies from Barbados to care for Lewis when his father died. When he emigrated, Morris’ uncle was sure to capitalize on the plantation land grants available in New Jersey for those who brought slaves, bringing forty enslaved Blacks in 1677.[2] He established a mine at Tinton Falls that by 1690 enslaved at least sixty-seven Blacks.[3] The younger Lewis Morris inherited his uncle’s holdings when he died in 1691. The younger Morris heavily supported the Church of England as a “staunch patron” and “shining light,”[4] contributing to the establishment of St. Peter’s (Perth Amboy)[5] and Christ Church (Shrewsbury),[6] St. Michael’s Church (Trenton), and even attempting to establish the Church of England through the New Jersey legislature.[7] He was an early member of the S.P.G. in New Jersey, served on the first vestry of Trinity Church (now known as Trinity Church, Wall Street), and ultimately became governor of the Province of New Jersey. He was one of the most influential lay Anglicans in New Jersey during the colonial period and may have been the most prolific enslaver in the American colonies at the time.[8] Lest we think that the Morrises’ practice of enslavement was somehow enlightened by a significant moral sensibility, we should note that his cousin (and business partner) of Passage Point, also named Lewis Morris,[9] was murdered in 1696 in revenge for abusing one of the Black Americans he had enslaved.[10] The baptism records of the enslaved during this period in Monmouth County similarly show that Anglican “masters” were not above raping the Black women they enslaved.[11]

            Another celebrated[12] East-Jersey Anglican lay-person, Colonel Peter Schuyler, derived a large portion of his wealth from enslaved labor. He inherited a large share in the Schuyler copper mine in Belleville, which was operated for decades in a state of heavy dependence on the labor of enslaved Blacks.[13] His large plantation (over 700 acres) also operated with enslaved labor. The mine was so prosperous that Schuyler’s father, before he died, was probably the wealthiest British subject in the American colonies.[14] Peter Schuyler was the primary donor responsible for giving the glebe and rectory for Trinity Parish, Newark,[15] helped establish the church there,[16] served as a warden,[17] and supported the parish at Second River.[18]

Queen Anne

            Such examples are indicative of the state of affairs in eastern New Jersey, which was home to a robust slave economy, but the Anglican churches of western New Jersey were also implicated in the enslavement of Blacks even as slavery was less firmly established there. A cursory look at some of those involved in the establishment of St. Mary’s Church in Burlington provides an illustrative example. One of the largest early benefactors of the Church was Governor (then of Virginia) Francis Nicholson, who not only enslaved Blacks himself, but helped establish the legal system that supported slavery in Virginia. His largess to the church was made possible through his profit from slavery. Queen Anne was also a significant benefactor, giving “lead and glass, a silver chalice and salver, a pulpit cloth, and a brocade altar cloth.”[19] As her wealth was significantly derived from the profits of slavery these gifts must be considered encumbered. A later benefactor in the colonial period who also enslaved Blacks was Governor William Franklin (son of Benjamin Franklin). He committed a “handsome subscription” for the rebuilding and repairing of the church in the early 1770’s.[20] Without doubt, many of the other forms of support the church in Burlington received in the colonial period were given by enslavers, even as a significant portion of the critical mass for the parish came from early followers of George Keith, perhaps the most anti-slavery Anglican priest of the era in New Jersey.

William Franklin

            Such dynamics however were not limited to the establishment of particular parishes. George Whitefield, the traveling Anglican priest who fostered much of the spirit of the so-called “Great Awakening” in the colonies, spent a good deal of time in New Jersey, though he was affiliated with no particular parish. As the highest profile Anglican priest in the colonies at the time, he had a significant popular influence in all areas, and certainly attitudes toward slavery among them. His perspective was indicative of that of many Anglicans at the time,[21] including many of those who would later become Methodists when that denomination formed immediately after the Revolutionary War. In a letter[22] written in New Brunswick on April 27, 1740 he describes how he purchased slaves to use for his mission, seeing no problem with this practice. He viewed Blacks as human, but criticized S.P.G. attempts to reach them, remaining dubious that “converted” Blacks were in earnest in their profession when preparedness for conversion was measured “only” in knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer, the ten Commandments, and the Nicene Creed.[23]

The title page of Thompson's Treatise

            More convinced of the legitimacy of the conversion of Black Americans’ was the influential Anglican priest Thomas Thompson. He was a highly educated and respected missionary of the S.P.G. who served in New Jersey for five years (1745-1750) before leaving the state to become the first formally commissioned Anglican missionary to West Africa. While in New Jersey he served as the S.P.G. missionary to Monmouth County, ministering to the parishes in Shrewsbury, Middletown, Freehold, and Allentown, and baptizing dozens of enslaved Blacks (including his own),[24] most of whom were the domestic slaves of parishioners. In his opinion, slavery was not inherently wrong, and he wrote a very influential treatise, “The African Trade for Negro Slaves shewn to be Consistent with Principles of Humanity and with the Laws of revealed Religion,”[25] arguing in favor of the use of slavery for the purpose of converting Blacks to Christianity. This pro-slavery position no doubt accounts for his popularity in a parish like Christ Church Shrewsbury which was home to dozens of church-going, Black-enslaving Anglicans.[26] After its publication (1772) the treatise circulated widely in New Jersey, due in part to his pre-existing reputation in the state, and was influential enough that the nascent abolitionist Quaker movement felt the need to respond to it in print.[27]

            Such a brief survey can only depict aspects of a general picture, but of this general picture several key elements emerge. While it may be true that average Anglicans did not account personally for a very significant level of enslavement, influential elite Anglican laity were prolific enslavers who participated fully in the “plantation economy” of New Jersey.[28] As a result, the best-established churches inevitably had significant ties to slavery as a result of this support from wealthy Anglicans. Further, as previously mentioned, these elite Anglicans had a significant early role in establishing the legislative codes related to slavery for the Province. 

Slaves cutting cane at a plantation similar to Codrington from "Ten Views of the Island of Antigua"
by William Clark, published in London, 1823. Courtesy British Library
(Accession Number 1786,c,9, plate IV) 

            Beyond these factors we must also remember that all the colonial era Anglican churches have significant ties to slavery through their connection with the S.P.G. The organization provided essentially all of the clergy for New Jersey in the colonial era and the bulk of the financial support for that clergy. That support was made possible in part through profits derived from the direct S.P.G. ownership of the Codrington Plantation in Barbados starting in 1710.[29] The plantation enslaved hundreds of Blacks at any given time and operated in S.P.G. hands for over one hundred years. 

            Further, the S.P.G. missionary priests sent to New Jersey during the colonial period, almost without exception,[30] supported enslavement of Blacks, and often enslaved Blacks themselves,[31] even as several of these priests encouraged baptism of enslaved Blacks. In general, however, the priests did not push this baptism agenda for enslaved Blacks hard enough to result in the baptism of plantation field hands (the majority of enslaved Blacks). Rather, Black baptisms were largely confined only to enslaved Black domestics in elite households, and even the extent of these was limited.[32]

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] The language used for S.P.G. missionaries’ commission was generally that they were being sent “into the plantations,” which is to say, to the British lands run as plantations using enslaved labor, for the benefit of the Crown and her supportive elite. For instance, in 1727, Bishop Gibson of London gave several addresses and wrote letters to promote the work a few of which were titled: “An Address to Serious Christians among ourselves, to Assist the Society for Propagating the Gospel, in carrying on the Work of Instructing the Negroes in our Plantations abroad,” and “Letter to the Masters and Mistresses of Families in the English Plantations abroad; Exhorting them to encourage and promote the Instruction of their Negroes in the Christian Faith,” and “Letter to the Missionaries in the English Plantations; exhorting them to give their Assistance towards the Instruction of the Negroes of their Several Parishes, in the Christian Faith,” as recorded in C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G. (London: 1901), 1:8.

[2] John Robert Strassburger, "The Origins and Establishment of the Morris Family in the Society and Politics of New York and New Jersey, 1630-1746" (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1976), 67. See also Graham Russell Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1665-1865 (Madison: Madison House, 1997), 9.

[3] Dean Freiday, “Tinton Manor: The Iron Works,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 74 (1952): 250-61. There were “60 or 70” enslaved Blacks there according to George Scot, The model of the government of the province of East-New-Jersey in America and encouragements for such as designs to be concerned there : published for information of such as are desirous to be interested in that place (Edinburgh: John Reid, 1685; Ann Arbor: Text Creation Partnership, 2022), 128-129, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A58781.0001.001. See also Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, p. 9.

[4] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 8, 216.

[5] William McGinnis, A History of St. Peter’s Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 1686-1956 (Woodbridge, N.J.: Woodbridge Publishing Company, 1956), 21.

[6] Keith, A Journal of Travels, 34, 46; David Humphreys, An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to the Year 1728 (London: J. Downing 1730), 57.

[7] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 157, 10.

[8] The mine at Tinton Falls accounted for approximately half of the enslaved Black population of Monmouth County at the time (Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, 12).

[9] Passage Point was a location within Shrewsbury. 

[10] Daniel J. Weeks, Not for Filthy Lucre’s Sake: Richard Saltar and the Antiproprietary Movement in East New Jersey, 1665-1707 (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2001), 113.

[11] The parish register of Christ Church Shrewsbury shows evidence of baptisms of 4 “bastards” and 12 “mulatto” “servants,” suggesting impregnation by Anglican heads of household. Parish register of Christ Church, Shrewsbury, N.J. See also Robert M. Kelley, “Slavery Evidenced in the Parish Register,” in The Crown (Shrewsbury, N.J.: Christ Church, Shrewsbury, 2018).

[12] Described in the S.P.G.’s Proceedings (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Abstract of Proceedings, 1750 [London: 1751], 50), as having a name held “very deservedly in high Esteem.” This estimation is repeated uncritically by Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 149. 

[13] Otis E. Young, Jr., “Origins of the American Copper Industry,” Journal of the Early Republic 3.2 (1983): 121-22.

[14] Henry Latrobe, "Description of the Schuyler Copper-Mine in New Jersey," The Medical Repository 6 (Nov., Dec. 1802, and Jan. 1803): 319-21.

[15] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 111-12, 129, 149.

[16] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 537.

[17] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 216.

[18] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 233.

[19] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 493-94.

[20] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 495.

[21] Even if his attitudes toward “enthusiasm” were not shared by many other Anglican priests.

[22] George Whitefield, Three Letters from the Reverend George Whitefield viz. Letter I. Written from Georgia, to a Friend in London; wherein he vindicates his Asserting, That Archbishop Tillotson knew no more of True Christianity than Mahomet. Letter II. To the same, on the same Subject. Letter III. To the same, dated at New Brunswick in New-Jersey, April 27, 1740 (Glasgow: James Duncan, 1740), 16-20.

[23] See letters from George Whitefield to the Bishop of Oxford from the summer of 1741 (June 9, June 18, July 28) and the Bishop’s responses (June 15, Sept. 17). Stewart M. Robinson Collection of Colonial Sermons, C0513, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

[24] Parish register of Christ Church, Shrewsbury, N.J., 1:166-71. Held at Christ Church, Shrewsbury.

[25] Thomas Thompson, The African Trade for Negro Slaves shewn to be Consistent with Principles of Humanity and with the Laws of revealed Religion (London: Baldwin, 1772).

[26] As evidenced in the early parish registers. Parish register of Christ Church, Shrewsbury. 

[27] See Granville Sharp, The just limitation of slavery in the laws of God, compared with the unbounded claims of the African traders and British American slaveholders. With a copious appendix: Containing, An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Thompson’s Tract in favour of the African Slave Trade. - Letters concerning the lineal Descent of the Negroes from the Sons of Ham. - The Spanish Regulations for the gradual Enfranchisement of Slaves. - A Proposal on the same Principles for the gradual Enfranchisement of Slaves in America. - Reports of Determinations in the several Courts of Law against Slavery, &c. (London: B. White, 1776).

[28] But in general, the most common pattern of enslavement in this period was for a household to enslave one or two Blacks. See Gigantino (The Ragged Road to Abolition, 14) and Hodges (Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, 8). There is no reason to believe that this was not also the most common pattern among Anglicans in New Jersey.

[29] See Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 141-70. To say nothing of the private donations to the organization, many of which were made possible through the labor theft inherent to enslavement.

[30] George Keith being the primary exception. He is most explicit in his views before becoming Anglican, as evidenced in An Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping Negroes (New York: William Bradford, 1693).

[31] Such as Rev. Samuel Cooke at Shrewsbury, who baptized his own enslaved Blacks, Rev. Thomas Thompson (as mentioned above), and Rev. Alexander Innes, unassigned priest resident in Monmouth County, owned a sizeable plantation (150 acres) which he managed via enslaved labor. A large proportion of the S.P.G. priests either owned plantations themselves (including at least Innes, Cooke, Beach, Vaughn, Skinner, and Lindsay) or received income from glebe or Church-owned plantation land (e.g. Blackwell, Ogden, Odell, Frazer) often worked by enslaved Blacks. Sporadic, brief references to these situations occur throughout Burr’s The Anglican Church in New Jersey. Rev. Thomas Haliday did not think the state of affairs adequate and suggested a more regularized and comprehensive plantation funding scheme employing enslaved Blacks to better ensure the comfort of the S.P.G. priests assigned to New Jersey (Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 132).

[32] Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, 69.

The Church of England in Colonial New Jersey

Summary: Prominent lay Anglicans laid the foundation for the Church in New Jersey, but much of its formal expansion can be credited to the priests sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.), a voluntary organization of the Church of England founded in 1701. The S.P.G. provided a large percentage of the funding for New Jersey priests, but the building of churches was mostly funded by wealthy locals. By the end of the colonial era over twenty churches had been built, many of which shared priests.

The Church of England in Colonial New Jersey

Even before the founding of the first Anglican churches in New Jersey, the influence of the Church of England there was significant. Such influence should probably be dated to the first British settlement, but certainly at least to the period after annexation in 1664. It is true that most European-descended settlers to New Jersey were not expressly devoted to the Church of England. Presbyterians, as a result of prior Dutch settlement, and Quakers, as a result of movement of settlers from other North American English colonies, were more numerous. Members of other Christian sects, including Baptists and Congregationalists, migrated to New Jersey as well, in part because there was no established Church.

            Nevertheless, the Anglican heritage of and influence upon many of the English settlers can be easily seen within a few decades through the settler interest in organizing worshipping Anglican communities.[1] This interest was prompted neither by a significant presence of ordained Anglican priests, nor by Anglican missionaries, who did not come to New Jersey in any numbers until after 1702. The first Anglican parish in New Jersey, St. Peter’s at Perth Amboy, dates its founding to 1685, even as this early self-organization by the laity was viewed rather dimly by the ecclesial authorities in England. The opinion of George Keith that the inhabitants of the region were afflicted by “little else but… heathenism”[2] is indicative of the general feeling among S.P.G.[3] clergy toward the colonial settlers before their coming. But such perspectives should be taken with a grain of salt.

Seal of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.)

            The Anglican church in the American colonies was marked by more prominent empowerment of the laity than in England proper, in part as a result of the modest early presence of formal representatives of the church hierarchy and the absence of a local bishop until after the Revolutionary War. As such, the descriptions of the woeful state of affairs of “religion” and the Anglican Church in the colonies given by members of the church hierarchy, including the S.P.G., should not be taken literally. Such negative statements are perhaps more accurately indicative of a failure to establish the Church of England in New Jersey.[4] While they accurately describe the absence of ordained clergy, such comments should not be taken as fully accurate regarding the state of the influence of the Church among the laity. This is certainly evidenced by the repeated urgent requests from the colonies for priests to minister locally.[5] Such interest hardly indicates a land bereft of the influence of religion generally, or the influence of the Anglican Church in particular. In fact, many of the English settlers had an affinity for the Church of England and her particular approach to religion.[6]

            Thus, the development of the Anglican Church in New Jersey began during this period before a significant presence of priests, and involved the early organization of a few local meetings in homes and, in some instances, building of church buildings.[7] These groups of laity did want the ministration of priests, and petitioned the newly formed S.P.G. to send them, promising support in various forms. The S.P.G. answered the call according to its means and began a campaign of support for the growth of the church in New Jersey. This mostly involved sending a few priests, providing a large portion of their stipend, and providing books and pamphlets. Most of the establishment of church buildings, rectories, and glebes came from the contributions of the laity of nascent New Jersey parishes.[8] Many of the missionary priests sent to New Jersey were assigned more than one parish, and some to several parishes. It was the minority of locations with a quorum of Anglican sympathizers who could fund a church building, a partial salary for a priest, and a rectory and/or glebe. Many locations that were visited by clergy for preaching and administering the sacraments never built a church, not for lack of Anglican sentiment, but more due to the subsistence nature of the economy, and the understandably inconsistent visitation from the limited number of clergy the S.P.G. did send. 

            In short, during the colonial period, the church grew significantly, as did the population of the state, but well-established parishes were the minority, and the coverage and support the S.P.G. could provide for the Province was limited. By 1775 there were eleven S.P.G. missionary priests operating in New Jersey, twenty-four churches built and operating, and an approximately equal number of “occasional preaching stations” being visited by the clergy.[9] When the attentions of the S.P.G. began in 1702 the population of the state was likely no more than 20,000,[10] and by the time of the first U.S. census in 1790 it had grown to over 184,139.[11]

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] E.g. the promptings of Colonel Lewis Morris recorded in “The Memorial of Col. Morris Concerning the State of Religion in the Jerseys, 1700,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 4 (1849-50) 118-21. Another typical example is the petition from the laity of Salem, New Jersey in 1704: “A poor unhappy people settled by God’s Providence, to procure by laborious Industry a Subsistance for our Familys, make bold to apply ourselves to God, thro’ that very pious and charitable Society… our Indigence is excessive, and our Destitution deplorable, having never been so bless’d as to have a Person settled among us, to dispence the August ordinances of Religion… Be pleased to send us some Reverend Clergyman… to whom we promise all Encouragement according to our Abilities…” British Archives Online, S.P.G. Correspondence, MSS Collection A, Vol. 16, pp. 201-2.

[2] George Keith, A Journal of Travels from New-Hampshire to Caratuck on the Continent of North-America (London: Joseph Downing, 1706), 47.

[3] The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.) was a voluntary association within the Church of England, founded in 1701.

[4] It was never established.

[5] And the conditions were described by some devoted Anglicans in America in particularly negative terms with the specific goal of inducing the Church to send priests. Some of the communications of Colonel Lewis Morris, Sr. in particular fall into this category.

[6] And this Anglican influence played a significant role in shaping slavery in the region.

[7] Burr notes “unorganized” (read: lay-organized) congregations in Shrewsbury, Middletown, Toponemus, Perth Amboy, Woodbridge, Piscataway, Elizabeth Town, Crosswicks, Burlington, and Salem. Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 19.

[8] Though, oftener than not, what was promised was never made good, as may be readily seen in the highly complainant missionary correspondence (summarized in Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, pp. 128-41).

[9] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, pp. 114-15. Churches or chapels were to be found in Newark, Second River, Elizabeth Town, Newton, Delaware, Kingwood, Amwell, Trenton, Allentown, New Brunswick, Piscataway, Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, Spotswood, Freehold, Shrewsbury, Middletown, Burlington, Mount Holly, Waterford, Berkeley, Salem, Greenwich, and Boonton. Of these Newark, Second River, Newton, and Boonton were in the region that became the Diocese of Newark in 1874. There were also several (non-ordained) preachers active on the three preaching circuits of New Jersey commissioned by the colonial volunteer Methodist society, who at least until after the Revolution, considered themselves under the authority of the Church of England.

[10] Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 9.

[11] U.S. Census of 1790. This figure is likely an undercount.

Slavery in New Jersey in the Colonial Era

Summary: Slavery was first introduced to the New Jersey region by the Dutch, but the English expanded and codified the enslavement of Blacks. English Barbadian enslavers settled in New Jersey and brought with them the brutal legal structures that had begun to develop in the Caribbean. Slavery became especially well established in East Jersey, but was employed throughout the state as part of a plantation economy.

 

 

Slavery in New Jersey in the Colonial Era

 

The earliest legal establishment of slavery in the land that would become New Jersey can be dated to the Dutch presence in the area prior to its English annexation. English settlement of the region only began in earnest following the annexation in 1664 of “New Netherland,” which to that point had been settled mostly by the Dutch in the vicinity of New Amsterdam (modern-day New York City) and by Swedes in the region along the lower Delaware River (formerly “New Sweden”). By the time the British took over, hundreds of enslaved people were already held against their will in both of these settled areas. The slavery set up by the Dutch in these areas was not legally racialized,[1] but it was widespread, with approximately one eighth of Dutch settlers in New Netherland owning slaves.[2] Once taken by the English, the territory was established as a proprietary colony, sold to Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley of Stratton, and split into East Jersey and West Jersey, dividing the region according to its two primary established areas of European settlement.

The East-West Jersey divide superimposed over modern New Jersey county lines.

            At this time the English continued to allow slavery throughout their colonies. In fact before the annexation, the Crown was already directly profiting from the Atlantic slave trade. From 1660 it had operated a transportation monopoly in the Atlantic as the sole legal provider of enslaved peoples to British colonies.[3] British settlement in New Jersey after the annexation mainly came from migration between colonies, including plantation owners from the British colonies of the West Indies who came for the promise of land granted in proportion to the number of enslaved persons brought.[4] These, largely Anglican, settlers moved to East Jersey, while much of West Jersey became increasingly dominated by Quaker influence. Ultimately, West and East Jersey were unified in 1702 into a single royal Province of New Jersey; however, the legal statutes regarding slavery adopted for the whole colony were based mostly on East Jersey precedent. 

Royal African Company coat of arms

            Barbadian settlers especially had brought with them to East Jersey the legal precedents of the English colonies of the West Indies. There, during the seventeenth century under the colonial plantation system, the English had developed both racialized chattel slavery and the new linguistic-legal conventions of “Black” (associated with “slave” and “pagan”) and “White” (with “free” and “Christian”).[5] The legal statutes of East Jersey, formalized in 1694 and 1695,[6] replicated and perpetuated these particularly English (and by extension, Anglican) systemic developments. After the unification of East and West Jersey the Barbadian plantation owners of East Jersey, through their political influence in the legislature,[7] managed to extend these laws to the entire unified province by way of the 1704 omnibus slavery bill. Among the provisions of this bill were the prohibition of property ownership for both slaves and free Blacks, and the formal disqualification of Christian baptism as legal grounds for manumission[8] (which had been a rather well-established European custom).[9] This latter provision was passed with full approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury.[10]

            These harsh laws were amplified in an even more draconian slave code, passed by the legislature in 1713-1714 in response to anxieties over “slave conspiracies” in the state. The codes effectively ended manumission, as those who desired to free Blacks they had previously enslaved would be required both to pay the Provincial government a bond of £200 upon manumission and then to render to each freed slave a further £20 every year.[11] The effect of these laws was both to control and to grow the enslaved population in the state and, by extension, to strengthen the role of slavery in the state economy. As a result, through the middle of the eighteenth century slavery took on an increasingly important role in the economy of New Jersey, becoming the “primary labor supply” in rural areas, but in truth, “[operating] in almost every imaginable locale and time.”[12] The enslaved population of New Jersey also rapidly increased as a result of increased importation of enslaved Blacks directly from Africa, and on the eve of the Revolution enslaved persons made up over seven percent of New Jersey’s population, while in some east New Jersey counties the figure stood at as much as fifteen percent.[13]

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] “Like in other colonies, New Jersey’s charter generation lived in a society that had neither firmly delineated laws on slavery nor used race to determine enslaved status.” Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 12.

[2] Joyce Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks: The Evolution of a Slave Society at New Amsterdam," New York History 59 (1978): 142-43.

[3] William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 22-23. The monopoly was initially called the “Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa” but was reorganized and renamed "Royal African Company" after 1672, continuing to operate as a monopoly until 1712 when the Crown began to allow other merchants to profit from the trade as well.

[4] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 13: “each settler received 150 acres and an additional 150 acres for each male slave and 75 for each female slave.”

[5] Edward B. Rugemer, “The Development of Mastery and Race in the Comprehensive Slave Codes of the Greater Caribbean during the Seventeenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly 70 (2013): 446-47.

[6] Which in Monmouth County required landowners to own slaves: Julian P. Boyd, ed.,  Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of New Jersey, 1664-1964, New Jersey Historical Series 17 (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1964), 51-67.

[7] The so-called Anglican “ring.”  See Nelson R. Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954), 373-75.

[8] See “An Act for Regulating Negro, Indian, and Mallatto Slaves within this Province of New Jersey,” December 12, 1704, in Bernard Bush, Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey, Vols. 1-5 (Trenton: New Jersey Archives, and Records Management, 1977-1986), 2:28-30.

[9] In part, as a result of the Doctrine of Discovery.

[10] The administration of the Archbishop had drafted a law “For Converting the Negroes &c In the Plantations” which specifically stated that baptism did not in any way change the property status of a slave. This was sent to various authorities in the colonies to influence the legislative process. See “1^st draught” in Lambeth Palace Archives, Gibson Papers, MSS 941, No. 72. Also Burr, The Anglican Church in New Jersey, 225.

[11] “An Act for Regulating of Slaves,” March 11, 1713/14, in Bush, Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey, 2:136-40.

[12] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 17, 3.

[13] U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1975), 2:1168; See also Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 17.