The Ragged Road to Abolition - James J. Gigantino II

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by the constant British attacks increased the intensity of anger and animosity toward Jersey loyalists and precipitated laws that punished the disloyal by confiscating their property to help finance the war effort. Loyalists Daniel and Henry Van Mater, for example, claimed in 1779 that Jersey loyalists “have been since obligated to quit their homes and property in a very precipitate manner,” which had left many in severe financial straits after the state confiscated them. Guy Carleton similarly remarked that New Jersey patriots increasingly excluded the loyalists “with circumstances of additional rage,” making their loyalty even more problematic for them.104 Patriots regularly confiscated and sold loyalist estates, which included land, houses, horses, kitchenware, bedding, and, most important, slaves. The state-sponsored sales of slaves symbolized the state’s reaffirmation that African Americans were equated with property, not freedom.105

      Though the sale of loyalist-owned slaves reinforced the equation of slaves as property, it had more to do with the hatred of loyalists and the need to profit from them rather than a concerted proslavery effort. New Jersey’s first state legislature, after it had deposed Royal Governor William Franklin, drafted new laws that imposed rigid guidelines on loyalty, which warned of the presence of persons “so wicked as to devise the destruction of good government or to aid or assist the enemies of the state.” It declared those who remained loyal to the Crown guilty of high treason.106 In 1778, the legislature enacted even more stringent regulations requiring the confiscation of property owned by those convicted of treason. The Commissioners of Forfeited Estates in each of New Jersey’s thirteen counties began to depose witnesses and establish cases that called into question the loyalty of hundreds of New Jerseyans. The commissioners brought treason cases before sympathetic patriot juries that routinely found the accused guilty, which triggered the seizure and sale of the traitor’s property.107

      New Jersey patriots ecstatically supported the confiscation of loyalist estates and encouraged the state to enact harsher anti-Tory laws. In 1781, ninety-eight patriots in Morris County petitioned for a law to allow the confiscation of property belonging to “a number of evil minded villains and disaffected persons” who entered New Jersey “in a secret and clandestine manner for the purpose of plundering and taking away the . . . property of the (state’s) good inhabitants.” These patriots demanded compensation from them for their economic losses.108 Similarly, Monmouth County residents applauded confiscation in 1779 and asked the legislature to use the money raised to reimburse them for damages caused by British raids, including those from Colonel Tye’s unit.109

      Patriotic fervor quickly turned to outrage and demands for greater state oversight when residents learned that the commissioners of the forfeited estates had abused their powers. Monmouth County patriots complained of the dishonorable conduct of the commissioners in manipulating sales so that friends, allies, and relatives could purchase estates at cut-rate prices. In Monmouth, as in other locales, the commissioners frequently published notices only one day before the sale, ignored higher bids in favor of their lower bidding friends, accepted bids after the auction had closed, sold estates as one cohesive package instead of in individual pieces, and prevented bidders from inspecting the property before the auction as required by law. These failures forced the legislature to enact even stricter sale regulations and required the legislative and executive branches to take an active and integrated role in the sales of loyalist property, including slaves.110

      The state’s role in slave sales had been ongoing since the early 1700s because British and later American admiralty courts routinely approved the sale of “Prize Negroes” captured from enemy ships. The eighteenth century especially saw hundreds of these captured black mariners sold into slavery since the colonies waged war almost continually since the 1730s in conflicts such as the War of Jenkins’ Ear, King George’s War, and the Seven Years’ War. The war against Spain in the late 1730s and early 1740s brought hundreds of “dark-skinned Spanish sailors” into American ports, especially in New York and New Jersey, which served as colonial privateering centers. Mid-Atlantic admiralty courts frequently determined that “the mere darkness of the Spaniards’ skin” enabled them to be sold as slaves even if they had been previously free. One such former Spanish sailor, George, a twenty-six-year-old slave from Burlington County, likely had been captured by privateers since records describe him in 1749 as a “Spanish mulatto fellow” who spoke “indifferent English” and had once “been a privateering.”111

      During the American Revolution, American admiralty courts continued the colonial practice of condemning captured black British mariners as slaves for sale. The prize system in the Mid-Atlantic both inflicted extensive damage to the British while enriching American seamen, ship owners, and government officials who regulated these sales. As historian Charles Foy contends, the prize system “extended the reach of American slavery beyond the shores of the Americas” and in turn reinforced slavery in the United States. Privateers, motivated more by profit than ideology, saw blacks as a profitable revenue source. These vulnerable individuals could be taken easily and sold as commodities in other ports, which led ship captains to actively seek out blacks on the high seas. Congressional laws on prizes allowed for considerable leeway in local admiralty court decisions about the status of blacks found on British ships. In New Jersey, especially along the Delaware River, courts operated from “the assumption that a black mariner was a slave” and could be sold as a prize along with any other goods found on the ships.112 For instance, on June 26, 1782, James Esdall of Burlington adjudicated the sale of Obadiah Gale and Edward Cater, both of whom had served aboard a British privateer but who had not been slaves.113 In the same year, John Bray, the captain and owner of the gunboat Revenge, attacked the British cutter Alert and forced the ship to run aground. Salvaging “a quantity of power, arms, a valuable chest of medicine,” Bray reported to Governor Livingston that he sent the ship’s crew to Elizabethtown for exchange but kept the eleven blacks he found on board because the admiralty court declared them captured goods instead of crew members. Bray, in June 1782, sold nine of these Prize Negroes in Trenton at auction.114 The process played out the same way in October 1779 when American privateers captured the British ship Triton and six black mariners went to auction in Burlington.115

      The state’s experience in selling Prize Negroes informed its sales of loyalist-owned slaves. However, surviving records on these sales remain in short supply. Records of individual estate sales that contain inventories listing slaves exist for only a few counties and record only twenty-nine slaves sold by the state.116 Records filed at the end of the Revolution with the Loyalist Claims Commission include evidence of at least 112 more.117 Of course, the total of 141 slaves likely represents only part of the real total as extraneous sources refer to slaves not included in these records.118

      A majority of the slaves confiscated from loyalists came from masters who had rejected the American cause very early on. For instance, Absalom Bainbridge, Prime’s owner who began this chapter, joined the king’s forces in 1776 and left Princeton with the British after their defeat in January 1777.119 Like Bainbridge, fellow Princeton resident Richard Cochran joined the British as soon as General Howe entered the city in 1776. Cochran helped procure provisions for the army, served as a deputy commissary, and administered oaths to local civilians. He claimed that because of his loyalty, patriots had seized his property, sold it at auction, and, in his own words, threatened to “hang me up were I ever to return to that country.” Due to poor health, he left military service and moved to London with his two sons in January 1778, leaving his wife and daughter in British-occupied New York. Cochran claimed an estate valued at just over 6,100 pounds, which included eight slaves (four men, two women, and two children), one of whom, his “Negro man named Mingo, was esteemed the most valuable Negro in New Jersey.” The commission approved his claim but paid only 1912 pounds because they believed his new position as a clerk provided him a stable salary.120

      While many loyalists fled the state with their families, others left their property in New Jersey to be protected by their wives. In July 1777, the state Council of Safety argued that these wives “obstruct(ed) the commissioners for seizing and disposing of the personal estate” by secretly and gradually moving property into New York. The council banished eighteen women to New York, “after their husbands,” so that the commissioners could more easily confiscate

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