New Jersey was a slave , Slavery existed alongside other forms of labor, such hired wage labor, to power the Colony’s agrarian economy. This made New Jersey a society with slaves, as opposed to a slave society, such as that which would develop in the Deep South in the early 19th century, where the economic and social structures of the state were entirely dependent upon and centered around slavery.

The turmoil and devastation that consumed New Jersey as a consequence of being a primary theatre of operations during the the Revolutionary War squelched any movement towards abolition, despite the idealistic rhetoric of equality that propelled the revolutionary movement. As historian James Gigantino illustrated in Ragged Road to Abolition: … , the ruin brought upon New Jersey during the war actually increased the demand for enslaved labor - so much so that by 1790, New Jersey would have more enslaved people than all of the New England States combined.

Whites and free-born or manumitted blacks participated in these other forms of labor, but it was only people of African descent who were enslaved in New Jersey, and who were subject to harsh and restrictive laws that regulated their movement and with whom they could associate.

…skilled tradesmen

The story of slavery in New Jersey is difficult to tell, but it must be told. Using ... we can see where in ... and reclaim the identities of those whose names, whose stories, whose very humanity were not valued.

How many enslaved people were there in New Jersey?

Slavery impacted every county in New Jersey during the Revolutionary era, but precisely how many men, women, and children of African descent were bound to labor in the State is difficult to calculate.

Today, we tend to think of New Jersey as separated into three geographic areas - North, Central (it exists!), and South. However, between 1676 and 1702, New Jersey was actually divided into two separate provinces - East Jersey and West Jersey.

Each province had a distinct cultural, religious, and ethnic composition, which resulted in the two Jersies differing in their reliance upon the use of enslaved labor.1 East Jersey retained much of its Dutch origins as part of New Netherlands, with communities in Bergen county still speaking a unique Jersey Dutch dialect even as late as the turn of the 20th century. New-England Anglicans and Scottish Presbyterians also made up a large portion of Essex, Middlesex, and Monmouth counties, in particular. West Jersey was heavily Quaker. With its close connection to Philadelphia and the burgeoning abolitionist movement within the Society of Friends originating there, the western and southern counties

Historian Frances Pingeon estimated that roughly 10% of the State’s population was enslaved, though no complete State census exists between 1745 and 1784.1 However, a partial census from 1772 offers a glimpse at the enslaved population in 8 of New Jersey’s then 13 counties.

Problem - no census counted slaves - only “Negroes” which comprised both enslaved and free.

 Tax Rateable Map
What is missing from the census are names. Who were the enslavers of New Jersey? Where did they live and how many enslaved people did they own?

COUNT ENSLAVE DPEOPLE ON TAX RATEABLES - WHO HAD LARGEST NUMBER, WHERE, MEDIAN NUMBER

Tax lists incomplete is several ways - missing towns and counties and only counting males over 16.

Dunmore’s Proclamation printed on front page of Pennsylvania Evening Post, December 5, 1775. Printed on page 2 of New-York Journal, December 7, 1775.

 Damage Claim Map

In few places is the degrading inhumanity of slavery more starkly illustrated than in the damage claim inventories. Listed after animals, chairs… inanimate objects.

 Runaway Ad Map

The Negro Fort

Yet another example of the paradox of the Revolution - free black man Jacob Francis serves in the Hunterdon County militia and later receives 1832 pension, Oliver Cromwell serves and receives 1818 pension, yet companies of the Essex County militia stationed around Newark were ordered to interdict enslaved people attempting to escape across Newark Bay to the Negro Fort.

self-liberation… attempting to liberate themselves

return armed as Loyalist militia - fears of slave revolt - Ragged Road to Abolition pg 48-53

“Jersey blacks used the Revolution to seek freedom on their own terms, yet these methods proved largely ineffective in overturning entrenched proslavery thought and practise for more than a small minority of slaves. Their exploits actually reinforced the state’s racial boundaries, strengthened anti-abolition sentiment, and limited abolition’s reach because absconding slaves helped exacerbate white anxieties of revolt.” - Ragged, pg 62

It is the true policy of America not to content herself with temporary expedients, but to endeavor, if possible, to give consistency and solidity to her measures. An essential step to this will be immediately to devise a plan, and put it in execution, for providing men in time to replace those who will leave us at the end of the year, for subsisting and making a reasonable allowance to the officers and soldiers. The plan for this purpose ought to be of general operation, and such as will execute itself Experience has shown, that a peremptory draft will be the only effectual one. If a draft for the war or three years can be effected, it ought to be made on every account. A shorter period than a year is inadmissible. To one, who has been witness to the evils brought upon us by short enlistments, the system appears to have been pernicious beyond description, and a crowd of motives present themselves to dictate a change. It may easily be shown, that all the misfortunes we have met with in the military line are to be attributed to this cause.

 Book of Negroes Map

Book of negroes - Nova Scotia Archives

 Footnotes

David Fowler, “These Were Troublesome Times Indeed”: Social and Economic Conditions in Revolutionary New Jersey. Barbard J. Mitnick, ed. New Jersey in the American Revolution, (New Brunswick: Rivergate, 2005), 15-20.
Frances D. Pingeon. Blacks in the Revolutionary Era. (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1975) , 6.
Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington. American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790. (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1966), 112.
For more on Dunmore’s Proclamation being disseminated through networks of communication within the enslaved community, see Robert G. Parkinson, Thirteen Clocks: Howe Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence, pg 111-112, and John Adams Diary, Sept. 24, 1775, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.