The Ragged Road to Abolition. James J. Gigantino II

to manumit slaves age twenty-one to thirty-five without bond after an examination by two overseers of the poor and two justices of the peace who would certify the slave would not become destitute. It also required owners to support former slaves if they ever required poor relief. Following this law, Robert Armstrong of New Brunswick brought his slave Tony for examination before two overseers and two justices of the peace in 1790. However, when Tony fell into poverty six years later, Armstrong claimed he had released any and all claims on Tony “to all intents and purposes as if he has never been my slave,” to escape paying for his care. Of course, the law prevented this very action and Armstrong had to support his indigent former slave.³¹

      The continued efforts of abolitionists in the 1790s to expand the availability of manumission helped many slaves negotiate freedom for themselves. In 1792, for instance, Burlington and Hunterdon County abolitionists petitioned the legislature to expand the manumission criteria by permitting masters to manumit slaves under twenty-one if the ex-slave was then indentured until twenty-eight. This proposal mimicked Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition law and encouraged slaveholders to sign away their future rights to children after a period of service. Although nothing came of the petition, it shows their desire to emulate a graduated system of abolition, one that extracted labor in exchange for freedom. This became the blueprint for the abolition plan enacted in 1804. In a larger sense though, the expansion of manumission was critical to hundreds of West Jersey blacks who used this viable legal avenue of freedom to achieve what they had strived for since the Revolution.³²

      The 1786 law also levied fines against masters who abused their slaves, further supporting Quaker amelioration efforts. This requirement led Henry Wansey, an English traveler who toured New Jersey in 1794, to observe that “many regulations have been made to moderate [slavery’s] severity.”³³ The law responded to a number of abuse cases, including one involving Monmouth County slaveholder Arthur Barcalow, who whipped his slave Betty for failing to follow his direction to return home. Despite acceding to her master’s will, Barcalow continued to beat Betty. A neighbor testified that Betty “was dead . . . [her] arm bloody and appeared to have been cut with a whip.” The coroner concluded that Betty died of blunt force trauma caused by the broom stick Barcalow wielded, which led a local jury to convict Barcalow of murder. Abolitionists made sure that all mistreatment, not just Barcalow’s extreme example, would be punished under the law. This section of the 1786 law, while spearheaded by abolitionists, helped slaveholders defend slavery as they claimed that their slaves lived as a protected class of servants. Slavery therefore acted as a positive benevolent institution, worthy of support.³⁴

      A regulation that mandated masters teach their young slaves to read, also part of the 1786 law, further bolstered a paternalistic defense of slavery and reflected the abolitionist desire to educate young slaves with skills to prepare them for possible future freedom. No record of any slaveholder being fined under this law remains but evidence suggests that some slaveholders, like Aaron Malick, did send their slaves to school, which likely helped some achieve freedom in the future. However, slaveholders before the 1820s viewed reading “as a tool that was entirely compatible with the institution of slavery.” Writing, in contrast, represented an “intrinsically dangerous” skill that slaveholders worked diligently to limit. As abolitionists never forced the issue of writing, the promotion of slave reading seemingly fits into the larger campaign to quell Quaker guilt.³⁵

      Quaker efforts to ease manumission requirements and temper slave treatment accentuated the differences between East and West Jersey. Slavery in West Jersey, due to Quaker influence, declined quickly due to manumissions. In Burlington County, for example, the county clerk recorded seventy-five manumissions between 1786 and 1800, which helped shrink the county’s slave population by 17 percent. Similarly, between 1790 and 1800, Gloucester’s slave population declined by 68 percent and Cumberland’s by 38, while those in East Jersey grew by 20 to 30 percent. These ex-slaves added to the already burgeoning free black community that had formed as a result of earlier Quaker manumission efforts.³⁶

      Both Quaker advocacy of abolition on a personal level and individual slaves negotiating with masters to gain their freedom worked simultaneously to destabilize the institution. For instance, John Hunt, a member of Burlington County’s Evesham Meeting, recorded his extensive efforts to convince recalcitrant Quaker slaveholders to abandon slavery. These Quakers put pressure on slaveholders to manumit at the same time slaves themselves pressured them for freedom from within. In July 1787, Hunt visited the home of Joseph and Mary Garwood, fellow Evesham Friends, to discuss manumission plans. Joseph purposely avoided meeting with Hunt, which led Hunt to instead “press things closest home upon” Mary. Ten days later, Hunt revisited the Garwoods with fellow Quakers Samuel Allinson and Elizabeth Collins. Mary again stopped the trio from seeing her husband, claiming he was “indisposed with bad fits.” Hunt suspected that Garwood had feigned illness to avoid a confrontation. In this case, Garwood’s slaves and their white allies failed in their negotiations for freedom as Garwood sold them to stave off potential economic losses.³⁷

      On the other hand, Hunt and Allinson convinced John Cox to manumit his slaves in 1787, though they failed to accomplish the same with Jacob Brown the following year. Likewise, Hunt visited the home of Micajah Wills and his wife several times between 1787 and 1794, but ultimately failed to convince Wills to manumit his chattel, though he kept in close contact with Wills’ slaves. In 1794 Hunt attended a funeral for one of them, where he remarked that while the slaves “behaved very sober,” the whites in attendance failed to keep quiet throughout the service, a jab at the demeanor of those who refused abolition.³⁸ Other Quakers, including Allinson’s son William, continually toured New Jersey trying to convince individuals to free their slaves. In 1804, for instance, William “set out on a tour into Sussex” on a mission to secure the freedom of two black families, though in 1803 he recorded his displeasure at the task, writing that he had engaged in the “irksome” task of “abolition business most of the afternoon.”³⁹

      In addition to individual meetings, Hunt attended religious services held by Burlington Friends for free blacks where they participated in both religious conversations and discussed the latest abolition news, which made them part of the abolition process and gave them power to take action to ensure freedom for themselves and their families. At one 1796 meeting, for instance, the organizers read information on the state of abolition in the North from the PAS, which the blacks in attendance discussed. Hunt remarked that one black attendee, Hannah Burros, took center stage and explained New Jersey’s complicated relationship with slavery to the others. Hunt seemed to think very highly of Burros, visiting her seven months later after she fell ill. Hunt wrote that she was “quite deranged and [had] lost her reason” and that he became emotional at her “sorrowful condition,” praying for her recovery.⁴⁰

      These local Quaker meetings also sought to help educate West Jersey’s free black population to show whites that blacks could learn and were worthy of freedom. In a 1790 letter to Quaker abolitionist William Dillwyn, Susana Emlen claimed that several night schools that taught “the Negroes reading, writing, and arithmetic” had recently opened in Burlington as a way “to atone in some measure for the wrong they have suffered.”⁴¹ The schools, opened between 1789 and 1791 by the Burlington Quarterly Meeting, joined those already operated by the Upper Springfield Monthly Meeting. Similarly, Salem Quarterly Meeting in 1790 solicited donations of funds to create integrated schools for both poor white and black children. By 1793, the funds raised by those Quarterlies funded the creation of three schools in southwest New Jersey, with another opening in 1794, all controlled by Quaker educators who taught an integrated student population.⁴² Likewise, Philadelphia’s Free Black School assisted Trenton Quakers form a larger school to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic in evening classes year round to the city’s black adults. It copied the structure of the Burlington School Society for the Free Instruction of the Black People, formed in 1790, with both struggling against negative perceptions of their students by local whites. For example, in 1793, the Burlington school’s leadership complained that it had encountered many who thought blacks too ignorant and unworthy to educate.⁴³

      The Quaker interest in manumission and education led hundreds of slaves to escape slavery but also gave ex-slaves allies to help develop their lives in freedom. Even though some Quaker