Summary: In the period after the Revolution some positive legal changes in New Jersey affected enslaved Blacks, including ending the importation of slaves and removing some of the obstacles to manumission, followed eventually in 1804 by the Gradual Emancipation Act, but in other ways the situation for Blacks worsened. Free Blacks were stripped of their right to vote in 1807 and White racism prevented the Black exercise of many freedoms that Whites took for granted. The free Black population grew every year, especially following the late 1820s when gradual emancipation finally began to take effect, and throughout the mid-1800’s Black New Jersey residents managed to carve out a difficult existence in a state where racist attitudes were so established that even the ratification of 13th Amendment after the Civil War was initially rejected by the state legislature.
Gradual Abolition and the Persistence of Slavery in New Jersey
After the Revolutionary war many New Jersey residents clearly saw the problem with continuing legal slavery in an ostensibly “free” nation, but many more insisted that the fledgling nation needed every economic advantage it could leverage to recover from the war. Meanwhile, most Americans held very racist views of Blacks. The influence of these latter two perspectives prevented any dramatic action in New Jersey on the issue of slavery. That New Jersey bore the brunt of the destruction from the war as the chief locus of military action provided a heavily deployed excuse for legislative inaction in freeing slaves. Nevertheless, Quaker pressures toward manumission and abolition began to take effect, and many private manumissions occurred in the years following the war. Quaker influence in western New Jersey resulted in diminishing levels of enslavement in the region, while in east Jersey the institution remained entrenched.[1] In the early days following the war (1786) the legislature passed an act[2] preventing further importation of slaves from Africa or other U.S. states, however intra-state trade was still allowed.[3]
The New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery was formed during this time and worked to protect freed Blacks, lobby for liberalization of slavery codes, and minimize the abuses of the institution. Following the Revolution, at least in theory, free Blacks in New Jersey could own property and vote, the only state in which these were legal rights. However, the constraints on Blacks, especially enslaved Blacks, were very slow to lessen. Following Caribbean revolts, in 1793 the federal government passed the Fugitive Slave Act which required inter-state co-operation in the return of escapees. In 1798 the New Jersey legislature passed a slave code[4] that re-affirmed the institution and strengthened constraints on the behavior of enslaved persons. In 1804 the New Jersey legislature passed a law (the Gradual Emancipation Act) for the gradual abolition of slavery,[5] but no enslaved persons were immediately freed through the bill. Children born to enslaved persons after July 4, 1804 would be freed upon a term of service of 21 years for women and 25 years for men. New Jersey was the last northern state to pass such a law, and few viewed the act as a dramatic development.
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| "An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery" (1804) Courtesy of the Library of Congress Printed Ephemera Collection |
This modest advance was accompanied by significant losses. Masters were allowed to abandon babies born to their slaves to the care of the state, but generally took the children back with state compensation, making their enslavement more profitable. Free Blacks lost the right to vote in New Jersey in 1807.[6] The New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery considered its work done and disbanded in 1809. The population of free Blacks grew, but at least in east Jersey, so did the population of enslaved Blacks. In 1820 the legislature passed an omnibus slavery bill codifying and re-affirming existing slavery laws on the books.[7] The New Jersey supreme court,[8] in spite of the significant population of free Blacks in the state, continued to defend the default assumption by law enforcement that Blacks were prima facie enslaved until proven otherwise.[9] As such, Blacks could not expect just application of the law.
The legal landscape for Black Americans during these decades was constantly shifting. Hard won protections at the state level required constant effort to maintain, but could still be threatened by federal actions. The 1826 New Jersey personal liberty law added protections, and a 1836 state Supreme Court case required trials by jury for purported “escaped slaves” in order to prevent corrupt decisions supporting enslavers.[14] However, the federal Supreme Court decision Prigg v. Pennsylvania of 1842 overturned all such state decisions.[15] Due to the various difficulties free and enslaved Blacks were experiencing in the state, and the increasing awareness and concern among Whites regarding these conditions, in 1839 the New Jersey Anti-slavery Society was founded. Further lobbying resulted in the passing of an 1846 law[16] that ostensibly ended slavery in the state, but euphemistically still required former slaves to remain bound “apprentices” for life. Practically, New Jersey slavery proved very hard to stop. The Dred Scott v. Sandford U.S. Supreme Court decision[17] of 1857 in particular undermined even the meager[18] legal rights that had to that point been won by Black New Jerseyans.
New Jersey, as a state near the Mason-Dixon line, developed into a key transit point, and even destination, for formerly enslaved Blacks escaping from the South. Towns along the east banks of the lower Delaware linked Blacks moving by boat to the corridor to New York City. Several free Black towns sprung up in this area, offering temporary protection to those moving further north, and longer-term shelter to those willing to risk proximity to the South and active slave-catching operations. Towns such as Timbuctoo, Colemantown, Snow Hill, Guineatown, Saddlertown, Springtown, and Gouldtown were critical stops on the New Jersey section of the Underground Railroad.[19] However, as seen by the modest growth in the Black population of New Jersey at this time, most Blacks were looking to head somewhere safer and more hospitable. In this period New Jersey authorities often cooperated with slave-catchers. Discrimination and segregation made property ownership and wealth building difficult for Black residents of New Jersey. There were some jobs available in service industries, but for the most part Whites worked to keep free Blacks employed in the same roles in which they had worked when enslaved.[20]
Once the Civil War broke out, New Jersey was, in many ways, a reluctant member of the Union. The persistence of slavery in the state meant that while technically New Jersey was a northern state in many ways, it maintained significant southern sympathies. When in 1865, at the conclusion of the war the U.S. Congress passed the amendment banning slavery in all states (except as punishment for a crime) the majority Democrat New Jersey legislature did not ratify it. It was not until a new, more Republican congressional class took office in 1866 that the New Jersey legislature ratified the 13th Amendment.
For more information on slavery in New Jersey see:
Geneva Smith, “Legislating Slavery in New Jersey,” https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/legislating-slavery-in-new-jersey.
Christopher Matthews, “The Black Freedom Struggle in Northern New Jersey, 1613-1860: A Review of the Literature,” https://www.montclair.edu/anthropology/research/slavery-in-nj/
James J. Gigantino, II, The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present Day (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019).
Jolyon Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
[1] The number of enslaved Blacks in east Jersey grew significantly in the decades after the war. See James Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition (Philadelphia: UPenn, 2015), 67.
[2] “An Act to prevent the Importation of Slaves into the State of New-Jersey, and to authorize the Manumission of them under certain Restrictions, and to prevent the Abuse of Slaves.” March 2, 1786, Acts 10th G.A. 2nd sitting. Excerpts appear at: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-f8a3-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.
[3] This act also removed some of the onerous existing barriers to manumission.
[4] “An Act respecting Slaves,” March 14, 1798, Acts 22nd G.A. 2nd sitting. http://fas-history.rutgers.edu/clemens/NJLaw/slavelaw1798.html.
[5] “An act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” February 15, 1804, Acts 28th G.A. 2nd sitting.https://dspace.njstatelib.org/xmlui/handle/10929/68964.
[6] “A Supplement to the act entitled 'An act to regulate the election of members of the legislative council and general assembly, sheriffs and coroners in this state,' passed at Trenton the twenty-second day of February, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven.” November 16, 1807, §1, Acts 32nd G.A. 1st sitting. https://dspace.njstatelib.org/xmlui/handle/10929/50467.
[7] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 150.
[8] Known as the “New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals.”
[9] This formal decision was made in 1821: Gibbons v. Morse, 7 New Jersey Law 20, Court of Errors and Appeals, November term, 1821. http://fas-history.rutgers.edu/clemens/NJLaw/gibbons1821.html. Also at NJ State Archives.
[10] Not overturned until 1836.
[11] Women began to be freed in 1825, and men in 1829.
[12] Founded in 1816.
[13] Hodges, Black New Jersey, 65-66.
[14] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 219.
[15] Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 222.
[16] “An Act to Abolish Slavery,” passed April 18, 1846. https://www.montclair.edu/anthropology/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2021/06/Slavery-in-New-Jersey-Literature-Review-Appendix-B-Slave-Codes_Remediated.pdf.
[18] And haltingly-acknowledged, yet hard-won.
[19] Hodges, Black New Jersey, 81.
[20] Exceptions existed of course, but these were the predominant patterns. See Gigantino, The Ragged Road to Abolition, 111, 117; Hodges, Black New Jersey, 63-64.
