The Ragged Road to Abolition - James J. Gigantino II

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November, “Eliobo” wrote to the New Jersey Journal that the recent increase in abolitionist sentiment had no basis in any real need for freedom for slaves, since slaves lived “free from all anxiety, perplexing cares, troubles and disappointments.” He rejected Green’s link between the Revolution and abolition, claiming it inappropriate to equate the slavery Great Britain exerted on the colonies with African slavery as the two shared little in common.30 A month later, Eliobo further advanced his proslavery argument by linking himself to the Perth Amboy petition six years earlier that had claimed that abolition would destroy white civilization. Eliobo argued that every “effort of the negroes” would be “to establish upon our ruin” and create a “kingdom of Cuffie.” In an apocalyptic vision of destruction and death, the author predicted that freed slaves would form an alliance with the Indians who, as savage as blacks, would “sweep our land with sallies of murder and rapine. Then will the shrieks and cries of murdered children and the lamentation of assassinated friends weltering in gore” force Americans to realize that abolition produced destruction.31

      “Marcus Aurelius,” another author writing in response to Jacob Green and the Pennsylvania law in the New Jersey Journal, joined Eliobo in claiming that even the discussion of liberty for slaves could “stimulate servants to insurrection.” Aurelius became even more enraged with the potential for revolt because he saw a clear difference between national freedom from the British and individual freedom of slaves. He argued that Green “in his heart knows they are measured upon two scales and have no connection with each other.” He, along with others, attacked the very notion that American liberty could ever be construed as equivalent to black liberty because blacks existed in such an inferior state. Their racism not only informed their fear of a race war but also began the process that restricted how far revolutionary freedom could extend to African Americans.32

      The proslavery voices that rose in protest were largely motivated by fears of slaves harnessing this abolitionist rhetoric for their own purposes. Like slaves in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Jersey slaves knew about the debates flying around them in the state’s newspapers and used them to negotiate with their masters. In Massachusetts, for example, slaves petitioned the legislature to demand an immediate end to their enslavement and used revolutionary ideas of freedom to do so. No formal petitions from slaves came to the New Jersey legislature, though rural slaveholders definitely believed that the Revolution’s ideas of liberty had influenced their slaves. These rural slaves had let it be known that “it was not necessary (for them) to please their masters for they should not have their masters long.” Revolutionary ideas therefore emboldened slaves to negotiate from a stronger vantage point by using language from the era that their masters knew, understood, and would cause a strong emotional reaction to.33

      In the aftermath of Pennsylvania’s passage of gradual abolition, abolitionist voices countered the proslavery opinions in the newspaper debates and again reiterated the powerful link between the American Revolution and abolition. In 1780, the New Jersey Gazette, the Journal’s rival paper, published a series of articles refuting the Journal’s proslavery pieces. John Cooper, a Quaker from Woodbury in Gloucester County who had repeatedly advocated for abolition as a member of the Legislative Council and Council of Safety, knew Green through their shared service in the provisional legislature and on the ten-person committee that wrote the state’s 1776 constitution. Like Green, Cooper argued that the Revolution should force Americans to recognize African American freedom. Cooper believed “in our public and most solemn declarations we say we are resolved to die free—that slavery is worse than death. He who enslaves his fellow creature must be worse than he who takes his life.” As he thought slavery a fate worse than death, Cooper advocated a much more radical agenda than other abolitionists: the immediate abolition of slavery.34

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      The Quaker-dominated abolition movement and the republican rhetoric it utilized attempted to transcend ideological and religious boundaries, thereby raising the potential for widespread acceptance of abolition during the Revolution. The revolutionary generation of American slavery brought significant potential for African American mobility and worked to change the way white New Jerseyans thought of slavery and how blacks negotiated for their freedom. The rhetoric of abolition had much to do with this potential and it brought the first real widespread discussions of black freedom to white New Jerseyans.35

      Quakers had succeeded at ridding much of West Jersey of slavery but had been less adept at convincing a large number of their fellow white New Jerseyans to join the cause. Anti-abolition New Jerseyans stood steadfastly against black freedom and combated it by trying to break down the connections between the freedom white Americans fought for from Great Britain and the type of freedom abolitionists wanted to give slaves. A successful abolition movement failed to develop because of the fear of race war, raw racism, and the lack of support in slaveholding areas of East Jersey. These fears and lack of organizational support joined together with the economic devastation caused by the Revolution, explored in the next chapter, to stymie the movement even as Pennsylvanians and New Englanders supported gradual abolition. Therefore, by the end of the war, abolitionism in New Jersey remained the legacy of only the Society of Friends and a minority of non-Quakers.

      Sustaining Slavery in an Age of Freedom

      The slave Prime experienced a very different American Revolution from most other slaves. A Hunterdon County native, he understood the promise of freedom the American Revolution could bring, especially after Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation and similar edicts from British commanders in New York. However, despite his best efforts, he could never capitalize on that promise as did other black Americans. Instead of ending the war as a freeman, Prime became a “slave of the State of New Jersey . . . liable to be sold as their property.”1

      Prime’s master, Princeton physician Absalom Bainbridge, hid his loyalist sympathies until the British marched into his hometown at the end of 1776. On their arrival, Bainbridge volunteered his house as the headquarters of General William Howe and joined the king’s army, in which he served until 1778. Bainbridge was stationed in New York until the British evacuation in 1783, when he moved to London. In his successful 1784 application to the Loyalist Claims Commission, established by Parliament in 1783 to hear cases of loyalists who suffered economic losses as a result of their loyalty, for damages totaling 6,000 pounds sterling, Bainbridge wrote that because of his early support for the king, New Jersey had declared him guilty of high treason and confiscated his property. In addition to his four hundred acre estate, Bainbridge listed numerous pieces of moveable property, including Prime. During the war, Bainbridge tried to remove Prime and his personal property to safety by sending his wife, Prime, and several wagons of household items to a relative’s home in Princeton before moving them all to his father-in-law’s in Monmouth. After Bainbridge left the army in 1778, he sent for his wife and Prime to join him on Long Island, though Prime took advantage of the confusion surrounding the war and successfully ran away to Somerset County.2

      Jacob Bergen, the state official charged with the confiscation and sale of loyalist estates in Somerset, seized Prime and considered selling him as the state had done with Bainbridge’s other property. Luckily for Prime, Bergen “humanely declined” to send him “to sale like a beast of the stall” and instead recommended he serve in the Continental Army to alleviate his owner’s debt to the Patriot cause. Prime served for the duration of the war as a teamster and left Continental service in 1783 when he moved to Trenton and began a free life as a day laborer. Only a few months after the Revolution ended, a man named John Taylor appeared at Prime’s home and claimed he had bought Prime from Bainbridge’s wife. At the same time, attorneys representing the state affirmed their previous contention that Prime, as part of a confiscated loyalist estate, belonged to the people of New Jersey and any sale by Bainbridge or his family subsequent to that confiscation was void. As a slave either to Taylor or to the state, Prime would lose the freedom he had gained because of the Revolution. After months of legal wrangling and an appeal to the Supreme Court, in 1786 the state of New Jersey affirmed the legality of Prime’s confiscation and the invalidity of Taylor’s claims. A military veteran who

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