£7yr 
 
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 .N54 H5 
 Copy 1 
 
 STORY OF THE SLAVE 
 
 Paper read before the Monmouth County Historical Association on Octo- 
 ber 30th, 1902, wherein is given some account of 
 
 Slavery and Servitude in New Jersey 
 
 WITH NOTES 
 
 Concerning Slaves and Redemptioners in other States 
 
 By Alfred M. Heston, of Atlantic City, member of 
 the New Jersey Historical Society 
 
 CAMDEN, N. J.: 
 
 SINNICKSON CHEW & SONS COMPANY. 
 
 1903. 
 
STORY OF THE SLAVE 
 
 Paper read before the Monmouth County Historical Association on Octo- 
 ber 30th, igo2, wherein is given some account of 
 
 Slavery and Servitude in New Jersey 
 
 WITH NOTES 
 
 Concerning Slaves and Redemptioners in other States 
 
 By Alfred M. Heston, of Atlantic City, member of 
 the New Jersey Historical Society 
 
 CAMDEN, N. J.: 
 
 SINNICKSON CHEW & SONS COMPANY. 
 
 1903. 
 
Two Copies R< 
 
 FEB 21 1903 
 
 \ Copyright tntry 
 $ LASS 0> XXc. No. 
 
 iT/ 1 // 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright, igo3, by A. M. Heston. 
 
Slavery and Servitude in New Jersey 
 
 SLAVERY existed in America long before 1619, when 
 the Dutch traders brought their cargo of human freight 
 to Jamestown. The Aztecs of Mexico enslaved not only 
 their enemies taken in battle, but those of their own nation 
 who were convicted of theft and other crimes. "By a stern 
 law," says Prescott, "every tax defaulter was liable to be 
 taken and sold as a slave." The same authority adds that 
 slave dealing was an honorable calling among the Aztecs. 
 After the discovery, in 1492, the unsuspecting natives of the 
 West Indies, race and stock of the Aztecs, were seized by the 
 Spaniards and put to work in the mines.* 
 
 Las Casas, whose father accompanied Columbus on his 
 first voyage, and who was honored with the title of "Pro- 
 tector of the Indians," outraged at the exhibitions of cruelty 
 in Cuba, proposed to relieve the natives by sending out Cas- 
 tilian laborers and importing negro slaves trom Africa. As 
 a youth in Spain. Las Casas had been attended by an Indian 
 page whom his father had brought with him from Hispan- 
 iola. Thus the uncompromising advocate of freedom for 
 the Indian began his career as the owner of a slave. t 
 
 Although Las Casas succeeded in substituting the negro 
 for the Indian as a slave, he did not prevent Indian slavery, 
 especially in the English colonies on the mainland, where, 
 for man}- years. Indians, taken prisoners in war. were held 
 as slaves. In a few cases, too, the whites who landed along 
 
 *An account of this phase of American slavery is given in Fiske's 
 Discovery of America, Vol. II. 
 
 fPrescott's "Conquest of Mexico," Vol. 1, Bk. 2, ch. 8. 
 
 (3) 
 
the unsettled coast could not resist the temptation to entice 
 the Indians aboard ship, and then sail away to sell them 
 in the settlements elsewhere.* 
 
 *Lawson, historian of North Carolina (pp. 73, 74), writing of those 
 New Englanders who sought to plant a colony at the mouth ot Cape 
 Fear River, in 1660, says they were driven off by the Indians, whose 
 children they had sent north under pretext of having them educated. 
 The Indians suspected that their children had been sold into slavery, 
 and became so hostile that the whites were glad to leave that part of 
 the country. _ 
 
 In a report made to the States-General of Holland, in 1616, Cap- 
 tain Hendrickson speaks of having discovered and explored "certain 
 lands, a bay and three rivers" (the Delaware, Schuylkill and ^ Maurice 
 Rivers), in a small yacht of sixteen tons burden named the "Onrest," 
 built at Manhattan. In this report to the States-General he further 
 describes some of the productions of the country, and says that he 
 bought three of the native inhabitants from the Mingoes and Mohicans, 
 who held them in slavery, and for whom he gave in exchange kettles, 
 beads and merchandise. 
 
 An instance of the capturing of Indians for slaves is found in the 
 account of the Tuscarora war, in North Carolina. When the attack 
 began, in 171 1, Governor Hyde, of North Carolina, sent to the Gov- 
 ernor of South Carolina for aid. He directed his agents there not to 
 fail to represent "that great advantage may be made of slaves, there 
 being many of them, women and children — may we not believe three or 
 four thousand ?" The Indian allies, coming from South Carolina to aid 
 Hyde, took back a great number of slaves from the conquered people 
 in North Carolina. The Indians, said Colonel Pollock, as soon as they 
 had taken the fort and secured their slaves, marched away straight to 
 their homes. Tom Blount, chief of a tribe of friendly Indians in that 
 section, also secured his captives for slaves. He proposed to attack a 
 certain small tribe, in which he thought there might not be enough 
 people to give each of his own warriors an Indian slave, and he accord- 
 ingly asked the North Carolina Council to promise some reward to 
 those who might not happen to have slaves allotted to them. Most of 
 the Indian slaves taken in this Tuscarora war were carried to other 
 colonies, a good many going to Massachusetts and Connecticut. They 
 were sold for about ten pounds each. More than 700 of them were 
 captured and sold before the war was ended. 
 
 Strachey, in his "Travayle into Virginia," speaks of a story that 
 he had from the subjects of an Indian chief, Eyanoco, who lived at 
 Ritanoe, somewhere in the region to the south of Virginia, and who 
 had seven whites who had escaped out of the massacre at Roanoke, and 
 these he used to beat copper. "It is not improbable that there is a 
 shadow of truth in the statement, although the details, must be ficti- 
 tious," says Dr. John Spencer Bassett, in his monograph on slavery and 
 servitude in North Carolina. "That the Indians of the colony later on 
 did enslave the whites whom they could take in their waters, or who 
 were shipwrecked off the coast, we know from the preamble of an act 
 of the Assembly about 1707. This form of white servitude left no trace 
 in the life of the colonv." 
 
With the white man enslaving the red through greed of 
 gain, small wonder is it that the red man enslaved the white, 
 the motive in the latter case, however, being revenge, rather 
 than profit. The first slaves that we hear of in North Caro- 
 lina were white people, whose masters were Indians; seven 
 whites who had escaped from the massacre at Roanoke in 
 1 71 1 being enslaved by the Indians. Per contra, the first 
 slaves that we hear of in New Jersey were Indians and 
 their masters were white people. During the first half of 
 the seventeenth century, the Swedes on the Delaware and 
 the Dutch on the Hudson enslaved members of the various 
 tribes thereabout.* 
 
 The Dutch settlers of Xew Amsterdam, also, after the 
 manner of the times in New Jersey, tried to enslave the 
 aboriginal red men, but the task proved both harassing and 
 unprofitable. Indeed, this attempted enslaving of the In- 
 dians by the Dutch burghers led to such trouble that the 
 burghers, in self defence, built a wall across the lower end 
 of Manhattan, whereby the liberty-loving red man was kept 
 from driving the slave-catching white man over the bat- 
 ten- and into the bay. The site of this wall is now the 
 money mart of New York. 
 
 The Dutcht and Swedes, first settlers on the Hudson and 
 Delaware, respectively, finding Indian slavery impossible, 
 brought negroes to our province from the west coast of 
 Africa; but while slavery was one of the social customs of 
 
 *In 1640 it was enacted in Massachusetts that there shall never be 
 any bond slavery in that province, unless it be the lawful captives take 
 t war-," or such as shall willingly sell themselves. In New Jer- 
 sey there was no war of extermination, as in Massachusetts, and no 
 captives taken in "ins* wars." but the Indians — a few it may be — were 
 enslaved from the beginning, and half-breeds, the off-spring of Indian 
 mothers, were likewise enslaved. As late as 1797, in a habeas corpus 
 proceeding. Chief Justice Kinsey delivered an opinion before the Su- 
 preme Court, in which he said. "The Indians have been so long recog- 
 nised as slaves in our law thai it would be as great a violation of the 
 rights to establish a contrary doctrine at the present day as it would be 
 in the case of the African, and as useless to investigate the manner in 
 which they originally lost their freedom." 
 
 fSee page 40 of this monograph. 
 
these two colonizing nations, it did not become a recognized 
 system until the advent of the English in 1664.* 
 
 The earliest recorded instance of ownership of negro 
 slaves in New Jersey is that of Colonel Richard Morris, of 
 Shrewsbury, who, as early as 1680, had sixty or seventy 
 slaves about his mill and plantation. It is said that ten 
 years later nearly all the inhabitants of northern New Jer- 
 sey owned slaves. t 
 
 Queen Anne's instruction to her cousin, Lord Cornbury, 
 Governor of New Jersey, shows clearly a desire to encourage 
 the importation of African slaves, and the Governor was 
 specifically instructed to report annually the number there- 
 of. A statute passed in 17 14, and repealed in 1721, impos- 
 ing a duty of ten pounds on every slave imported for sale, 
 was called forth by the desire to stimulate the introduction 
 of white servants, a similar statute in Pennsylvania having 
 had that effect.t 
 
 Small as she is and large as was her interest in slavery, 
 New Jersey was surpassed by Rhode Island — "little Rhodie" 
 — in the magnitude of her importations from Africa. 
 
 In 1770 Rhode Island had as many as 170 vessels engaged 
 in the slave trade, and it is undoubtedly true, as Samuel 
 
 *A certain Conningsmarke, a Swede, popularly known as "the long 
 Finne," having been convicted of stirring up an insurrection in Dela- 
 ware, as part of his punishment, was sentenced by the Council at New 
 York, in 1669, to be sent to "Barbadoes, or some other remote planta- 
 tion, to be sold." After having been kept prisoner in the "Stadt-house 
 at York" for a year, the long Finne was duly transported to Barbadoes 
 and sold into slavery. — Smith's History of New Jersey, pp. 53, 54. 
 
 fAlthough begun during the proprietary period, previous to 1702, 
 slavery in New Jersey did not become a recognized system until the 
 time of Queen Anne, when there was a steady increase in the number 
 of slaves until 1776, with special forms of trial and punishment pre- 
 scribed in the criminal law. This was also the period of a strong aboli- 
 tion movement among the Friends, ending in 1776. with the denial by 
 Friends of the right of membership in their society to slaveholders. 
 
 IQueen Anne was "willing to recommend" to the Royal African 
 Company that the province "may have a constant and sufficient supply 
 of merchantable negroes, at moderate rates," and the Governor, on his 
 part, was instructed to "take especial care" to secure prompt payment 
 for the same. 
 
Hopkins says in his "Reminiscences," that Rhode Island 
 was mure deeply interested in the slave trade than any other 
 colony in New England. There is a record of one good 
 old elder, whose ventures on the African coast always turned 
 out well, who returned thanks on the Sunday following the 
 arrival of a slaver into the harbor of Newport, in these 
 words: "An overruling Providence has been pleased to 
 bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted 
 heathen, to enjoy the blessings of a gospel dispensation."^ 
 
 Sir John Hawkins, who, as is well known, commanded 
 the first English expedition to Africa for slaves, issued to 
 his captains the following orders: "Serve God daily; love 
 one another; preserve your victuals; beware of fire; keep 
 good company." It lias been said that "Hawkins sailed on 
 the ship Jesus, with faith as serene as if he had sailed on a 
 crusade." At one time they were so long becalmed at sea 
 as to face starvation, but the pious slaver says in his notes, 
 "Almighty God, who never suffereth his elect to perish, 
 sent us the ordinary breeze." 
 
 The infamy of this slave traffic was attached quite as 
 much (o the people of the North as to those of the South. 
 In fact, the well-to-do deacons and church members of New 
 England controlled the business. The history of that time 
 reveals Peter Faneuil with one hand piling up profits from 
 his immense slave trade, while with the other he was erect- 
 ing a cradle of liberty in Boston, and dispensing private and 
 
 *Originally the right to enslave the negro was hased on the fact 
 that lie was a pagan. 1 1" such were the case, the early American colon- 
 ists asked themselves, would not conversion enfranchise him? It was 
 a matt< r of doubt in the minds of the settlers, and hence they hesitated 
 to allow their negroes to become converted. Maryland, in 1671, en- 
 acted that conversion or baptism should not be taken to give freedom 
 
 laves. In 1677, an English court gave an opinion that converted 
 slaves were "infranchised." James Adams, a clergyman of the Estab- 
 lished Church, who was in North Carolina in 1709, complained because 
 the masters would "by no means permit their slaves to be baptized, hav- 
 ing a false notion that a Christian slave is by law free." _ A few of the 
 
 oes, he said, were instructed in the principles of religion, but they 
 were not baptized. [See note on page 40.] 
 
8 
 
 public charity. New England vessels,* outward bound., 
 were laden with rum, which was traded to African chiefs 
 for a cargo of prisoners, and these, with other blacks whom 
 the ship captains might chance to steal, were taken to the 
 southern ports or to the West Indies and traded for molasses. 
 The molasses was in turn brought to New England and 
 converted into rum, wherewith to buy another cargo of 
 .negroes in the dark continent. In 1750, Newport carried 
 on an extensive business' of this character. Three hundred 
 distilleries, we are told, were in operation, and the tonnage 
 of the vessels lying at the town's wharves exceeded that of 
 New York. Airs. Stowe, in her tale of "The Minister's 
 Wooing," has portrayed in the most interesting manner the 
 awakening of the New England conscience to the sinful- 
 ness of buying and selling human souls. t Perth Amboy 
 
 *The Fame, a noted slaver and privateer of Newport, had a keel 75 
 feet long. The space between decks, where the slaves were kept during 
 the time the cargo was accumulating (three to ten months), and while 
 crossing the Atlantic, was usually a room as long and as wide as the 
 ship, but only 3 or 4 feet high. The men were ironed together, two by 
 two, by the ankles, but the women and children were left unironed. The 
 irons on the men were fastened to the deck or ceiling. With the in- 
 creasing demand came a change in the methods of obtaining cargoes. 
 Originally the trade was confined to captives in war, but subsequently 
 raids were resorted to, and free men were kidnapped and sold in the 
 most heartless manner. Treachery and murder were common practices 
 resorted to in order to secure a few slaves. After the trade was out- 
 lawed, in 1807, cruisers were stationed on the African coast to stop the 
 work of the slavers. The slave ships came to the coast disguised as 
 honest traders, and watched for a day when the coast was clear ; then 
 they got their slaves quickly on board and sailed away. To enable a 
 ship to load quickly, depots were established at convenient points and 
 pens were built by setting tree trunks into the ground to make a high 
 fence. In these the slaves were held by the hundred; sometimes more 
 than a thousand w.ere imprisoned in one pen to await the arrival of a 
 ship. Kidnapping and raiding increased until the market price of slaves 
 fell as low as from $12 to $20 a head. The demand continued because 
 the hardships of slave life killed off the slaves more rapidly than slave 
 children were born. The blockade of the Confederate ports by the Fed- 
 eral ships in 1861 ended slave smuggling. 
 
 fThe question of slavery being before Congress on April 19, 1784, 
 Thomas Jefferson, who was opposed to the buying and selling of human 
 beings, proposed to exclude slavery from all the Southern and West- 
 ern States admitted after 1800. The effect of this would have been to 
 
was New Jersey's chief port of entry and blacks were to be 
 seen there in goodly numbers, many of them freshly im- 
 ported and still bearing their tribal marks. Adults sold for 
 from 40 to 100 pounds, and a child of two or three years 
 brought from 8 to 15 pounds.* 
 
 A society for the abolition of slavery was formed in New 
 Jersey as early as 1786. The constitution, after mention- 
 ing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the uni- 
 versal rights of men/' concludes with the statement that 
 "we abhor that inconsiderate, illiberal and interested policy 
 which withholds those rights from an unfortunate and de- 
 graded class of our fellow creatures." This society, of 
 which Joseph Bloomfield was its one-time president, was 
 influential in obtaining legislation for the abolition of slavery 
 in New Jersey. t 
 
 confine slavery to the southeast corner of the country. The measure 
 was lost in Congress for lack of a single vote. Had that New Jersey 
 delegate, John Beatty, been present, whose illness kept him at home that 
 day, the "history of this country on the slavery question might have 
 been wholly changed. Air. Beatty would have voted in favor of Jeffer- 
 son's measure. 
 
 -In 1744 a hill to prohibit the importation of slaves was rejected by 
 the Council of New Jersey, which declared that even the mere discour- 
 agement of importation was undesirable. The Council maintained that 
 tin- colony at that time had great need of laborers. An expedition to 
 tin- West Indies had drawn off many inhabitants, and the privateering 
 profession had attracted many others. For these causes wages had 
 risen so high that "farmers, trading-men and tradesmen" only with 
 
 ■ difficulty were able to carry on their business. In 1 76 1 the ques- 
 tion of a duty on slaves was under discussion. The free importation 
 of negroes had then become a source of inconvenience. A large num- 
 ber of slaves were "landed in this province every year in order to be 
 run into New York and Pennsylvania," where duties had been establish- 
 ed. Furthermore, New Jersey had become overstocked with negroes. 
 
 fjohn Woolman, a Quaker, native of Mt. Holly, first suggested the 
 idea of abolishing the slave trade in America. He published many tracts 
 
 nst slavery and argued against it publicly, making long journeys to 
 talk to individuals on the subject. In the course of a visit to England 
 he visited York, where he died of smallpox on October 7, 1772. Dr. 
 Stephen 1'.. Weeks, in "Southern Quakers and Slavery," says the first 
 man in America to preach immediate and unconditional emancipation 
 was Charles Osborn, born in North Carolina, and Levi Coffin, of "un- 
 derground railway" fame, a native of the same State. 
 
10 
 
 An act prepared by this society and passed by the Legis- 
 lature in 1804, provided for the gradual abolition of slavery 
 in this State. Every child born of a slave after the fourth 
 day of July of that year was to be free, but should remain 
 the servant of the owner of the mother until the age of 
 twenty-five years, if a male, and twenty-one if a female. 
 The right to transfer this "servant" to another person was 
 guaranteed by the act.* 
 
 *The slave population of New Jersey at different periods, according 
 to the census returns, was as follows : 
 
 In 1790 11,423 
 
 1800 12.422 
 
 1810 10,851 
 
 ^20 7.557 
 
 1830 2.254 
 
 1840 674 
 
 1850 236 
 
 i860 18 
 
 In i860 there were four slaves in Hunterdon county ; one in Mid- 
 dlesex ; one in Morris : two in Passaic : nine in Somerset and one in 
 Warren, making a total of eighteen. Hannah Mandeville, formerly a 
 slave, and the last of her kind in New Jersey, died at Newark, on No- 
 vember 10, 1902. She was past ninety years of age. Mrs. Mandeville 
 was a widow, her husband having died thirty-two years previously. Be- 
 fore the war she belonged to the old Condict estate in Hudson county. 
 When the war freed her she went to Pompton Plains with her husband, 
 Anthony Mandeville, and lived there a number of years, afterward 
 moving to Newark. 
 
 A free negro was entitled to vote in New Jersey during the early 
 years. The suffrage was not confined to whites by the Constitution 
 adopted in 1776. Article IV states that "all inhabitants of this colony, 
 of full age, who are worth fifty pounds * * * and have resided 
 within the country" for twelve months are entitled to vote. Not until 
 thenew Constitution was adopted, in 1844, was the elective franchise 
 limited to whites. In 1793, as proof of the illegality of an election for 
 determining a site for the Middlesex County Jail and Court House, it 
 was stated that "a negro man was admitted to vote, who had no legal 
 residence, and his declaration that he had been manumitted in another 
 State was received as sufficient proof of his being entitled to vote." 
 The implication here is that a negro, able to show clear proof of his 
 freedom, and having a legal residence, was entitled to vote. 
 
 It was a part of the universal law of slavery that a slave should not 
 testify against a white person in the courts. In North Carolina, when 
 charged with complicity with Teach, the pirate, known as "Blackbeard," 
 in 1719, Tobias Knight urged, in his defence, that the prosecution had 
 introduced the evidence of four negro slaves, "which by the laws and 
 customs of all America ought not to be examined as evidence." Not 
 satisfied with denying them the right to testify against the whites, the 
 
II 
 
 Under the operation of this act and a further act passed 
 a few years later (1820) it was supposed that slavery in 
 New Jersey would gradually disappear, but both laws proved 
 ineffective. Still later (1846) another act was passed, 
 abolishing slavery, but even this did not bring about the 
 complete emancipation of the slaves. This last "abolition" 
 
 North Carolina, in 1741, enacted, that if any negro, mul- 
 or Indian, bond or free, be found to have testified falsely, he should, 
 without further trial, be ordered by the court to have one ear nailed to 
 the pillory and there to stand one hour, at the end of which time that 
 ear should be cut off: then the other ear should be nailed to the pillory, 
 and at the end of another hour be cut off as the former. Finally the 
 luckless felluw received thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, "well laid 
 on." 
 
 In 1604 a Monmouth county justice sentenced a negro named 
 "Caesar," convicted of murder, as follows: "Thy hand shall be cut 
 off and burned before thine eyes. Then thou shalt be hanged up by 
 the neck until thou art dead, dead, dead: then thy body shall be cut 
 n and burned to ashes in a fire, and so the Lord have mercy on 
 thy soul, Caesar."— "Story of an Old Farm," by Andrew D. Mellick, 
 
 P- 22 > 
 
 Mr. Andrew D. Mellick. in his interesting "Story of an Old Farm," 
 
 give-, a very g 1 description of slavery in Somerset county. The 
 
 granted their holidays and enjoyments. In the week fol- 
 lowing Christmas they generally gave a party, to which the respectable 
 colored people of the neighborhood were invited. The whole week was 
 one - festivity, and but little work was expected of the blacks. 
 
 in, the day of "general training" (usually in June) was another 
 • holiday for these slave-. This drill of the militia was regarded 
 kind of fair and was a time of great sociability. The family ne- 
 attended in a large wagon, taking with them root beer and 
 ginger cakes b 1 offer for sale. 
 
 To whs 1 xtenl negroes in New Jersey took part or aided in the 
 on it is difficult to determine. A law of 1780, for the recruiting 
 of the remainder 01 New Jersey's quota of troops for the service of the 
 United States, forbids the' enlistment of slaves. The following year a 
 law for the same purpose repeat-; the prohibition. Yet slaves from New 
 rved, in various capacities, both the State and the Federal Gov- 
 ernment during the war. Two instances are recorded when a slave was 
 unfitted by an act of the Legislature as a reward for faithful ser- 
 in the Revolutionary cause. In the manuscript notes of a septua- 
 irian, quoted by Mickle in his "Reminiscences of Old Gloucester," 
 published in [845, we are told that he (the septuagenarian) was in the 
 ,t Red Bank on the Delaware on the morning of October 23, 1777, 
 the day after the battle, wlnn he saw that a number of the men under 
 Coloni were black- and mulattoes. 
 
 By the slave law of 1714 any "negro, Indian or mulatto slave," mur- 
 ir attempting the death of any freeman, wilfully murdering 
 any slave, committing arson, "rape on any free subject." or mutila- 
 tion of any free person, is to suffer the penalty of death. The man- 
 
12 
 
 law substituted apprenticeship for slavery, and every slave 
 became an apprentice for life, bound to his owner, unless 
 voluntarily discharged from service. 
 
 Twenty-two years ago (1880) that distinguished' Jersey- 
 man, Hon. Garret A. Hobart, native of Monmouth, and at 
 that time a member of the State Senate, introduced and 
 
 ner of death, however, is not specified, but is to be such as the "ag- 
 gravation or enormity of their crimes," in the judgment of the jus- 
 tices and freeholders trying the case, "shall merit and require." The 
 testimony of slaves was admitted in the trials. When a slave was 
 executed, the owner received for a negro man thirty pounds and for 
 a woman twenty pounds, the money being raised by a poll tax upon 
 all the slaves in the county above fourteen years of age and under fifty. 
 A form of execution frequently chosen was burning at the stake. 
 At Perth Amboy, in 1730, a negro was burnt for the murder of an 
 itinerant tailor. In Bergen county, in 1735, a slave, "Jack," was 
 burnt. He had beaten his master, had threatened to murder both his 
 master and his master's son and to burn his master's house, and when 
 arrested he tried to kill himself. In Somerset county, in 1739, a negro 
 was burnt for brutally murdering a child, attempting to murder the 
 wife of his overseer and setting fire to his master's barn. In 1741 
 two negroes were burnt for setting on fire several barns in the neigh- 
 borhood of Hackensack. The New York negro plot of 1741 caused 
 many executions by burning as well as by hanging in New Jersey. 
 —Whitehead's "Early History of Perth Amboy," pp. 318-320; Weekly 
 Post Boy, July 2, 1750; New Jersey Archives XII, p. 652. 
 
 In 1734 a rising near Somerville was feared. Certain negro quar- 
 ters some miles remote from Colonel Thomas Leonard's dwelling-house 
 had become a rendezvous for the negroes of the neighborhood. The 
 slaves stole from their masters provisions of various sorts, which they 
 carried to their place of meeting and feasted upon, sometimes in large 
 companies. It was claimed that at one of these meetings some hun- 
 dreds had entered into a plot to gain their freedom by a massacre of 
 the whites. A belief on the part of the negroes that they were held 
 in slavery contrary to the positive orders of King George appears to 
 have been an element contributing to the excitement. According to the 
 plan of the conspirators, as soon as the weather became mild enough 
 so that living in the woods might be possible, at some midnight agreed 
 upon, all the slaves were to rise and slay their masters. The build- 
 ings were to be set on fire and the draught horses killed. Finally, the 
 negroes, having secured the best saddle horses, were to fly to the In- 
 dians and join them in the French interest. Suspicion of a negro plot 
 was first aroused by the impudent remarks of a drunken slave. He 
 and another negro were arrested, and at their trial the above details 
 were brought out. The insurrection, believed to be threatening, was 
 suppressed with considerable severity. About thirty negroes were ap- 
 prehended; one of them was hanged; some had their ears cut off, and 
 others were whipped. Poison was found on several of them. — New 
 Jersey Archives XI, pp. 333, 340. 
 
13 
 
 had passed a bill which removed from the statutes the last 
 vestige of slavery in New Jersey. An act permitting the 
 master of a slave to take him or her to the public work- 
 house, to be whipped had remained on the statute books 
 for many years, contrary to the laws of the United States, 
 and it was this obsolete law which was thus repealed by 
 Mr. Hobart.* 
 
 That delirium of the New York people in 1741, known as the "Ne- 
 gro 1 y," appears to have spread to some extent into neighbor- 
 ing New rersey, also. Mr. W. A. Whitehead thinks that this panic 
 caused many executions in New Jersey. In one day seven barns were 
 burned ai Hackensack; an eighth caught fire three times, but fortu- 
 nately was saved. It was believed that these were set on fire by a 
 combination of slaves, for one negro was taken in the act. The people 
 of the neighborhood were greatly alarmed and kept under arms every 
 night. '1' d with committing the crime were burned. 
 In th 'it Book of the .Indices and Freeholders of E^sex county 
 are the following items: "June 4. I/4L Daniel Harrison sent in his ac- 
 count of w 1 carted for burning two negroes." * * * "February 
 
 25. 1741--'. Foseph Heden, acct. for wood to burn the negroes Mr. Far- 
 rand paid allowed 0.7.0. Allowed to Isaac Lyon 4 curry for a load of 
 wood to burn the first negro. 0.4.0."— "A Study of Slavery in New Jer- 
 sey," by 1 lenrv S. Cooley. 
 
 A law of 1754 provided that in the borough of Elizabeth, servants 
 and slaves accused of "any misdemeanor or rude or disorderly behav- 
 ior," being brought before the Mayor, may be "committed to the work- 
 house to hard labor" and receive corporal punishment not exceeding 
 thin the system was established throughout the State. 
 
 "Any stubborn, disobedient, rude or intemperate slave or male ser- 
 vant" m ig the world, ou-e to endure confinement and 
 labor, at the discretion of a Justice <<\ the Peace. The master paid the 
 mce of tin- slave while so confined. 
 
 In 170s. Hendrieck Christian Zabriskie, of Bergen county, was 
 awarded thirty pounds for his negro named Harry, lately executed for 
 the murder of CI. The money was collected from the slave- 
 
 owners of the county, upon the basis of an assessment of ten pence per 
 head upon rill slaves in the county. 
 
 In Hackensack, in 17(10. a slave pleading guilty to the charge of 
 Stealing was whipped at the public whipping post and before the houses 
 of two' prominent citizens, with thirty-nine lashes, on each of three days. 
 taken from place to place tied to a cart's tail. 
 
 *Mr. Hobart was a member of the Monmouth County Historical 
 \- rom the time of its organization, in 1898, until his death, 
 
 in iqoo. 
 
 [t is related of a town constable, who had charge ot a public work- 
 northern part of Xew Jersey, that he had a reputation for 
 proficiency in administering the lash to those slaves whom he was called 
 upon to whip. Caleb, a slave, had never been sent to the workhouse 
 for a whipping, but he knew the reputation of the constable. During 
 
14 
 
 In West Jersey, north of Burlington, and near the Hud- 
 son, among the Dutch, slave owning was more prev- 
 alent than in the Calvinistic towns of East Jersey. The 
 Quakers, indeed, in spite of the teachings of Friend John 
 Woolman, of Mount Holly, apostle of abolition, were slave 
 owners during all of the colonial period of New Jersey.* 
 
 About the year 1738 a book entitled "All Slave Keepers 
 Apostates" was published in Philadelphia, and in the pre- 
 face the author said : "These things following are so far 
 from offending or grieving my very dear, true and tender 
 friends called Quakers, who love the truth more than all, 
 that it is by their request and desire that they are made 
 publick." 
 
 To this statement the "Friends called Quakers" took ex- 
 ception, and they expressed their disapproval of the book 
 by a minute adopted at the yearly meeting for New Jersey 
 
 the Christmas season his master, who was indisposed, felt called upon 
 to send Caleb to the workhouse for punishment, and he wrote a note 
 to the constable about as follows : "Constable Brown — Please give the 
 bearer thirty-nine lashes and charge to me. Thomas Jones." 
 
 Calling up Caleb, Mr. Jones ordered him to take the note to Mr. 
 Brown, who would give him a grubbing hoe. Caleb started toward Mr. 
 Brown's home, adjoining the workhouse, but his suspicions were 
 aroused. He could not understand what his master wanted with a 
 grubbing hoe at Christmas time, and his conscience not being clear of 
 guilt, he suspected that he was to be whipped. Meeting a boy, he took 
 out the note and said: "Massa Bob, what is dis note? Got so many 
 ub dem dis mornin', I got 'em mixed." The boy read the note aloud, 
 and Caleb looked grieved and puzzled. The boy passed on and pres- 
 ently Caleb's face brightened. Seeing a negro boy, he called to him 
 and said: "Boy, does you want to make a shillin'?" "Yep," said the 
 boy. "Well, take dis note to Massa Brown's, an' git a grubbin' hoe, an' 
 I wait here till you comes back, an' den I gibs you a shillin'." The boy 
 hurried off and delivered the note to the town 'constable, who took him 
 into the yard, locked the gate, and proceeded, in spite of the boy's pro- 
 tests, to give him the desired flogging, Caleb in the meantime hurrying 
 off home. That evening his master asked: "Caleb, did you get that 
 grubbing hoe ?" "No, massa ; I gib a boy a shillin' to fotch dat note to 
 Massa Brown, and I spec he got dat hoe." 
 
 *William Penn himself, whose light on slavery was not then awak- 
 ened, says in a letter to his steward, James Harrison, at Pennsbury, Pa., 
 dated 1685, referring to his indented white servants, who were changed 
 too often: "It were better they were blacks, for then we might have 
 them for life."— Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, Vol. 2, p. 262 
 
15 
 
 and Pennsylvania, held at Burlington in 1738. The minute 
 says : "It is not improbable that some readers may be per- 
 suaded to believe the author is one of the people called 
 Quakers, and that his book has been printed at their request, 
 especially were they to be altogether silent on this occasion. 
 Therefore, they have thought it fit, and hereby do give pub- 
 lick notice that the book aforesaid contains gross abuses, not 
 only against some of their members in particular, but against 
 the whole society ; that the author is not of their religious 
 community, and that they disapprove of his conduct, the 
 composition and printing of his book, and therefore are not 
 to be accountable for its contents." The book being a 
 homily against slavery, it may be argued that this minute 
 of the Yearly Meeting is equivalent to a declaration in favor 
 of slavery, which is at variance with the position of the 
 Quakers in after years on the slavery question. Members 
 of this religions society originated and fostered the Under- 
 ground Railway, an association having for its object the 
 aiding of runaway slaves, and they gave every possible as- 
 sistance to runaways from the South. The Quakers were 
 also the strongest supporters of the Abolition party, which 
 existed before the Civil War.* 
 
 *In October, 1774, the colonists, when united to oppose British op- 
 turned their thoughts to the unfortunate negro slaves and 
 signed an agreement that they would "not purchase any slave imported 
 the in 1 'lay of December next; after which time we will wholly 
 discontinue tin- slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, 
 nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures 
 to those who arc concerned in it." The prohibition in slave importation 
 was not legally imposed until the act of March, 1807, became operative. 
 This law proving ineffectual on account of the ease and success of slave 
 smuggling, an act was passed by Congress, in 1820, which imposed the 
 death penalty upon all who were proved to be engaged in the slave trade. 
 In 1842 the United States entered into a treaty with Great Britain to 
 keep a sufficient naval force on the slave coast to effectually aid in the 
 suppression of the slave trade. In order to escape detection, it was a 
 common practice for the slaver to drown his black cargo when chased 
 by the naval authorities. One case is recorded where 600 negroes were 
 thus disposed of. 
 
 The struggles in Congress over slavery began with the Missouri 
 Compromise law, in 1820. The formation of anti-slavery societies and a 
 general agitation in the North began in Jackson's administration, about 
 
i6 
 
 A cautious disapproval of slavery by the Quakers of New 
 Jersey and Pennsylvania is seen in the action of the Yearly 
 Meeting in 1716. The minutes of that meeting say that 
 out of consideration for those Friends whose consciences 
 make them opposed to slavery "it is desired that Friends 
 generally do as much as may be to avoid buying such negroes 
 as shall be hereafter brought in, rather than offend any 
 Friends who are against it; * * * * * yet this is 
 only caution, not censure."* 
 
 The extent of the African slave trade in New Jersey is 
 unknown, but it is estimated that the number of blacks 
 brought from Africa to all of the American colonies before 
 the Revolution equalled nine millions, and one German his- 
 torian (Hune) considers these figures too small. Mr. 
 George Bancroft, American historian, on the other hand, 
 says the number of importations was about three millions, 
 to say nothing of the 250,000 thrown into the sea. He es- 
 timates that the profits of the English merchants in this 
 trade were not far from four hundred million dollars. Ban- 
 croft draws a sad word-picture of the miseries endured by 
 the negroes on the voyage from Africa. Often 500 were 
 stored in vessels of not over 200 tons burden. They were 
 generally chained in pairs by the ankle, and below decks, 
 when sleeping, each was allowed a space of only six feet 
 by sixteen inches. For exercise they were made to dance 
 and caper on deck to the tune of the whip. The hardships 
 of the voyage resulted in a death-rate never less than 12 
 and often as high as 50 per cent, before reaching America. 
 Sailing masters, we are told, on approaching a slaver at 
 sea, made it a rule, when possible, to keep to the windward, 
 to avoid the horrible odors that came from the open port 
 
 1830; and the Kansas-Nebraska law of 1854 brought the anti-slavery 
 feeling to a focus. The election of Lincoln, ii^ i860, led the South to 
 declare for secession, and as a result of the war, President Lincoln is- 
 sued his famous Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The 
 fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution in 1868 and 
 1870 finally ended the slavery evil in America. 
 
 * Woodbridge and Vicinity, p. 73, by J. W. Dally. 
 
i7 
 
 holes and hatches of these ships, laden with human cargoes. 
 The ingenuity of man, eager to torture his fellow beings, 
 could not have planned a more complete hell on earth than 
 a crowded slave ship on a protracted voyage.* 
 
 *The sole survivor of the last vessel to bring a cargo of slaves to 
 the United States was living in the pines, near Egg Harbor City, At- 
 lantic county, in 1888. Nearly 70 years of age, with no idea of the moral 
 questions involved in the trade, maintaining that "niggers" were as good 
 a cargo to run as sugar or cotton, the old man told many stories of a 
 life lived with the wildest and most adventurous class of the seafarers 
 of fifty years ago. As a slaver, this old fellow would argue, he got his 
 $30 a month; while on a "Quaker ship," where the captain read prayers 
 on a Sunday, he- would get $14 and hard knocks. For his part he pre- 
 ferred the risk of hanging and his $30. 
 
 This is the -lory of old Obed Hicks, as taken down by the writer 
 in [888: "In -May. 1858, 1 was in New York. I had come off a cruise 
 and was paid off at Matanzas, so I had plenty of money, which, like 
 most sailors, 1 fairly chucked through the hawse-hole and soon found 
 myself hard up. One day 1 was going down Broadway and was hailed 
 by an old captain of mine, named Corrie. I had made three voyages 
 with him in a orig called the Dart, owned in Philadelphia by a firm that 
 didn't see any harm in slaving. The captain asked me what I was do- 
 ing and I said 'No good.' 'All right,' he answered, 'come with me and 
 u a lift.' 
 
 "So we went down to the Battery and took a boat there. The 
 moment I saw the men in her I knew what was up. They were Span- 
 iards and I knew one ><i them. We were pulled across the river to the 
 Long Island shore. 
 
 "We had six men in the crew, all Spaniards but one. In a few 
 days we were hoarded by a lot of revenue men and the vessel was seiz- 
 
 but it was -"on -et right, and by June 25 we lay off the Moro at 
 II. \ana. and now work was rushed on the schooner. Her hold was 
 cleaned out, everything was knocked away to make room, and when we 
 let't C uba the decks were full, fore and at't. with water casks. A slaver 
 ha- to carry as much water as a man-o'-war, for if it give- out the nig- 
 heep; they can't go three days without it. The Wanderer 
 was a goer and when we struck the Trades she just sailed herself, and 
 we had nothing to do hut eat <\nd growl. We got into the Bight of 
 
 n, I think. August 10, [858, and at once went up old Calabar River. 
 A Portuguese named Fontana, who looked like a Madagascar monkey, 
 had a barricoon there and he was to find us our cargo. 
 
 "There was a Spanish vessel from Porto Rico, commanded by a big, 
 double-jointed, man-eating Yankee, named Briggs, and he was to be 
 despatched first. Slave- were scarce, and everything went slow, and 
 then Briggs and the old Portuguese were always squabbling, but finally 
 lie gol 420 niggers aboard, with gratings on hatches and everything 
 -hip shape. Then the Yankee and Fontana had a final row, which end- 
 ed in Briggs grabbing Fontana by the neck and fairly firing him over the 
 spanker gaff into the river. In a minute the sharks had him, and that 
 was tin- last of the Portuguese. Of course, there's no law on that coast, 
 
WHITE BONDAGE IN NEW JERSEY. 
 
 The system of white bondage, known as redemptive servi- 
 tude, existed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, and to some extent during the early part of the 
 nineteenth century. The redemptioners were largely per- 
 
 but the Yankee paid for it. Some of Fontana's friends gave informa- 
 tion to an English corvette that lay outside, and when Bnggs sailed 
 they signaled the man-o'-war from shore, and the Yankee and his vessel 
 were taken. 
 
 "The heat was awful, and the land breeze smelt like bilge water; 
 anfl we lost two of our crew from fever. We had to stay there a month 
 waiting for a caravan from the interior, but at last it came, and we 
 took aboard 270 blackbirds, for whom we paid from thirty to fifty dol- 
 lars apiece. They were all young and healthy, and it took some crowd- 
 ing to get them aboard a 250-ton craft. We hurried to get away, and 
 at night were safely out of the river and by daylight out of sight of 
 land, and no cruisers to be seen. The Yankee frigate Cumberland was 
 on the coast, but she could not catch a bumboat, such a tub as she was. 
 "Now our work began. Captain Corrie had a plantation in Georgia 
 with slaves of his own and knew how to handle his cargo. There were 
 about sixty women and children and these were kept on deck all day 
 and made to wash themselves. The men were taken out of hold four 
 hours at a time, being divided into four gangs, so that only seventeen 
 died on the voyage. Half of them committed suicide by doubling their 
 tongues back into their throats. This was the smallest loss I ever saw 
 in a slaver. I have seen twenty-eight thrown overboard in a day. We 
 had fine weather and by November 9 were in sight of the Cuba moun- 
 tains. We came off to Matanzas and signalled and three men came off 
 to us. One was named Lamar and another Elliott. These were the 
 owners. We lay here under the lee of an island four or five days and 
 then made our course north. 
 
 "It was intended to make a landing on the Florida coast, but there 
 was a revenue vessel off there, so we made for the coast of Georgia. 
 Here we dodged around until the 18th, and then ran into St. Andrew 
 Sound and anchored about a hundred yards from land. It was just 
 getting dark when three barges came alongside and inside of an hour 
 we had a clean ship. Where the negroes went to, I don't know. 
 
 "Next morning I and a man named Brown were paid off and the 
 Spanish crew kept on the vessel. We got ashore, and after dodging 
 around in the swamps, came to Savannah. I heard some talk of the 
 Wanderer and got a passage North as soon as I could, but Brown and 
 some of the Spaniards were taken and their ship was seized, but it 
 didn't amount to anything." 
 
 Those who were engaged in the enterprise lost heavily. Planters 
 would not buy the negroes, as they could get no lawful title to them 
 and they were eventually given to anyone who would keep them. The 
 Wanderer was fitted up as a privateer by some of the Florida Confed- 
 erates during the Civil war and sailed for Galveston, but ended her 
 eventful career on one of the Florida reefs, being caught in a norther 
 and driven ashore. 
 
i9 
 
 sons, who, to reimburse the owners and masters of the ships 
 for their passage and provender across the Atlantic, agreed 
 that their services should be sold for a stipulated number of 
 years. This form of bondage was usually voluntary and 
 the time of servitude was fixed, seldom exceeding seven 
 years, except in the case of very young persons. At the 
 end of their terms these voluntary redemptioners were 
 merged into the mass of white population, without any spe- 
 cial taint of servitude. Harsh and disagreeable as it may 
 seem in this age. the system gave to the colonists great num- 
 ber-, of energetic and thrifty settlers, who, by reason of their 
 poverty, otherwise never could have come to America. 
 
 The English, rather than the Swedes or the Dutch, who 
 preceded them, introduced the system of redemptive servi- 
 tude in the colonies along the Delaware and Hudson. By 
 a bloodless conquest in October, 1664, New Sweden (Penn- 
 sylvania, West Jersey and Delaware) came under the rule 
 of Great Britain, and in a few years the business of introduc- 
 ing redemptioners began. 
 
 True, a white slave, called "'Anthony." was brought to the 
 Delaware shore from Sweden on the sloop Griffin in 1637, 
 and remained in the colony as a bondsman. He served 
 Governor Printz at his capacious mansion and spacious or- 
 chards on Tinicum [sland, in 'the Delaware, making hay for 
 the cattle and accompanying the Governor on his pleasure 
 yacht. 
 
 "Anthony" was living as late as March I, 1648. and prob- 
 ably remained there until the fort and lands of the Swedes 
 were surrendered to the Dutch, as we read, "for want of 
 men and ammunition," in 1655. Tn this conflict between 
 the Swedes and Dutch, ammunition was an entirely super- 
 fluous article, the so called battle being decided in this wise: 
 Taking it for granted that the most numerous party would 
 conquer, if they fought, they also took the fighting for 
 granted, and solved the problem of victory by an equation of 
 noses. It was found that the Dutch noses largelv outnum- 
 bered those of the Swedes, and accordingly the standard of 
 
20 
 
 Holland waved in bloodless triumph over the ramparts of 
 Tinicum. Nine years thereafter the flag of England super- 
 seded that of Holland. 
 
 Of the first white laborers or bond servants in New Jersey- 
 there were three classes: i. Those who were brought here 
 under indenture to serve a period of years, usually four to 
 seven, to pay the cost of their passage. 2. Criminals, vaga- 
 bonds and other obnoxious persons transported by order of 
 the English courts, subsequent to 1 618. 3. Kidnapped per- 
 sons, usually children, stolen in the streets of London and 
 Liverpool and sold by the ship captains to such planters as 
 would pay the cost of their passage. From these three 
 sources many people came to New Jersey and the other 
 colonies." 
 
 The importation into the colonies of negro slaves, who 
 were found to be cheaper than white servants, checked in 
 a measure the trade in redemptioners. The rivalry was 
 between the blacks and the whites, and the blacks won. In 
 this there is an analogy to that process by which negro 
 slavery supplanted Indian slavery in the West Indies. The 
 abuses connected with Indian slavery in the West Indies 
 touched the conscience of the people, and negroes, who could 
 better stand slavery, were introduced. The abuses con- 
 nected with white servitude in New Jersey and the other 
 continental colonies finally touched the hearts of the British 
 people, and again the negro was called on to bear the bur- 
 
 *The demand for servants before the rise of slavery was always 
 very great in the American colonies. It was the impossibility of supply- 
 ing this by the regular means that furnished the justification professed 
 in the English penal statutes and gave encouragement to the illicit prac- 
 tice of "spiriting." In the early years, before these means were re- 
 sorted to, dealing in servants had become a very profitable business. 
 The London merchants were not slow to see the advantages of such 
 a trade; a servant might be transported at a cost of from six pounds 
 to eight pounds and sold for forty pounds or sixty pounds, and a sys- 
 tematic speculation in servants was begun both in England and some 
 of the colonies. Regular agencies were established, and servants might 
 be had by anyone who wished to import them "at a day's warning." 
 Others were consigned to merchants in the colonies or sent with shtp- 
 loads of goods on a venture. 
 
21 
 
 den of necessary labor. True, this was the case in greater 
 degree in Virginia and other southern colonies, but here 
 in New Jersey, as elsewhere, it was a case of the survival 
 of the fittest, and eventually white servitude went down 
 before the black man's superior endurance.* 
 
 Truth compels us to say that England, during the re- 
 demptive period, used America as a dumping ground for 
 its human offal. In 1769, Dr. Samuel Johnson, speaking of 
 Americans, said to a friend: "Sir, they are a race of con- 
 victs and ought to be content with anything we may allow 
 them, short of hanging."t 
 
 *One hundred poor boys and girls, who were about to starve in the 
 street > of London, were sent to Virginia in 1619, to be bound to the 
 public land tenants for a term of years, at the end of which they were 
 to become themselves tenants-at-halves, with an allowance of stock and 
 corn i" begin with. Industrial apprenticeship was also authorized, the 
 object being to encourage trade and to stop the excessive planting of 
 lcco in the colony. The term was usually limited to seven years, or 
 in the case of girls, upon marriage or becoming of age. 
 
 It is a significant fact that the first negroes were brought to Vir- 
 ginia in [619, the same year in which the principles of indented servi- 
 tude were developed, and yet forty years later there were but 300 ne- 
 
 - in that colony. From [664 to [671, several shiploads of negroes 
 were brought in, and in the latter year there were 2,000 black slaves 
 and 6,000 white servants in Virginia. By 1683 the number of servants 
 was nearly [2,ooo, while the negroes numbered only 3.000. But from 
 this time servitude gave way before slavery forced on the colonies by 
 the Royal African Company, at the head of which was King Charles 
 II and his brother James, the Duke of York, who sought to hasten the 
 adoption of slavery by cutting off the supply of indented servants. — 
 Servitude in the Colony of Va., p. 91. 
 
 In the Pennsylvania Gazette of May 28, 1761, we find this advertise- 
 ment: "Just imported from Barbados, in the ship William and Mary, 
 George Nicholson, master, and now lodged at Daniel Cooper's ferry on 
 Xew Jersey shore, a negro man and two negro boys, who are to be sold 
 by Willing, Morris & Co. : the purchaser to pay the duty imposed by 
 act of the Assembly, if brought into this Province." A few months later 
 this firm advertised 170 negroes "fresh from the gold coast." The 
 Willing here mentioned was Thomas Willing, Mayor of Philadelphia 
 and first presidenl of the Bank of the United States. The Morris was 
 none other than Robert Morris, the great financier of the Revolution. 
 
 The Following advertisement appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal 
 
 August 6, 1701 : "To be sold, on board the schooner Hannah, lying 
 in the river Delaware, very near Daniel Cooper's ferry, West New Jer- 
 sey, opposite Philadelphia, a cargo of likely negroes, just imported in 
 said schooner from tin- coast of Guinea. For terms of sale, apply to 
 Thomas Riche, David Franks or Daniel Rundle." 
 
 fBoswell's Johnson, II, 312. 
 
22 
 
 In the latest edition of Boswell, who chronicled this say- 
 ing, it is explained by the following foot note: "Convicts 
 were sent to nine of the American settlements. Accord- 
 ing to one estimate, about 2,000 had been sent for many 
 years annually. Dr. Lang, after comparing various esti- 
 mates, concludes that the number sent might be about 50,000 
 altogether." 
 
 These English views of America, in the period of penal 
 settlements, move indignation in the breast of an ardent 
 American, for whom Massachusetts stands as a colony of 
 conscience; New Jersey and Pennsylvania as an asylum for 
 martyrs, and Virginia as the dominion of high-bred cavaliers. 
 But a student who would nothing extenuate nor set down 
 ausfht in malice is bound to ascertain how far the convict 
 element really pervaded the nine plantations, Massachusetts 
 on the North, New Jersey midway and Virginia on the 
 South. In his search for information he will get little help 
 from our standard histories. Bancroft, in 1887. said to 
 James Davie Butler,* that in speaking of felons among the 
 settlers, he had been very economical in dispensing the 
 truths he had discovered. This historian, we feel- sure, 
 wrote too early to expect that American eyes could bear the 
 light of full disclosure. 
 
 A large class, and probably a majority, of the convicts 
 shipped to America during the colonial period were other 
 than political offenders. In 1670, cattle killers and burners 
 of corn-stacks became liable, either to death or transporta- 
 tion to the plantations. The provincial authorities of Vir- 
 ginia, the same year, passed the notable act prohibiting the 
 importation of convicts; but this, like other acts of a similar 
 aim in all the colonies, was overruled and nullified by orders 
 from the king to his provincial officers. For other reasons 
 also this prohibition did not prohibit. Planters needed 
 laborers, and welcomed a supply from whatever quarter. 
 Negroes were brought from Guinea, and kidnappped per- 
 
 "American Historical Register, Vol. 2, p. 12. 
 
23 
 
 sons from the British Islands: also those who had sold them- 
 sel\ btain a passage to America, or convicts who had 
 
 been sold by sheriffs to shipmasters.* 
 
 The Gentlemen's Magazine of that period furnishes a 
 particular record of criminals shipped to New Jersey or 
 the other colonies. From this source we learn that William 
 Dnell had been hung at Tyburn on November 24, 1739, but 
 when laid out for dissection came to life. He was shipped 
 to America on the following February 10th. 
 
 On September [8, 1751, Philip Gibson, who had been 
 condemned to death for a street robbery, would not accept 
 the offer of fourteen years' transportation and insisted on 
 his former sentence, which was that he should be hanged. 
 After the Court had argued with him for some time, he was 
 induced to consider the commutation till the next sessions, 
 and on ( >ctober 21 he accepted the lighter sentence and was 
 shipped to the colonies. On September 19. 1750, one Es- 
 cote. a tobacconist, for buying 40,000 pounds of tobacco at 
 sixpence a pound, was sentenced to fourteen years' trans- 
 lation — a rather severe punishment for receiving stolen 
 Is. No "Jersey Justice" ever equalled that. 
 
 When Cromwell had conquered Ireland, says Walpole in his "King- 
 dom of Ireland," the Irish officers sought safety on the continent, while 
 
 rank and file were pressed to enlist in foreign service. "As many 
 as 34.000 men were thus hurried into exile. Widows and orphans the 
 enl shipped wholesale to the West Indies — the boys for slaves, 
 the women and girls for mistresses to the English sugar-planters. The 
 lave dealers as far hack as the days of Richard 
 Strongbow, in the twelfth century— sent their agents over to Ireland to 
 hunt down and ensnare the wretched people. Orders were given on 
 the governors of jails and work-houses for boys who were of an age 
 to labor and women who were marriageable." 
 
 The words "West Indies" in the foregoing excerpt probably mean 
 the best American market, no matter where. "A curious chapter might 
 be written on the word 'Indies' and the historic mistakes which have 
 ilted from misapprehensions of the geographical term," says the 
 Ami torical Register. In [652, Peter Heylyn, a standard Eng- 
 
 lish cosmographer, printed in his folio concerning the Western Hemi- 
 
 re these word-: "It is sometimes called the New World. Its most 
 usual, yet somewhat improper name, is America. The most improper 
 name of all. and vet not much less used than that of America, is the 
 
 , Indies." The English Historical Register for 1715, and long 
 afterward, in it- record of current events, constantly sets down, under 
 the heading "West Indies," news from Virginia, and even New York 
 and Boston. 
 
24 
 
 Under the date of May 31, 1747. we read that 430 rebel 
 prisoners from the jails of Lancaster, Carlisle, Chester, 
 York and Lincoln, were transported in one month from 
 Liverpool to the plantations. Eight of these were drown- 
 ed by a boat upsetting, the men being handcuffed and there- 
 fore unable to swim. "This number, with the rest," says 
 the record, "makes above a thousand rebels transported this 
 year." 
 
 Again, under date of February 10, 1767, we read that 
 "Fourteen transports from Durham, Newcastle and Mor- 
 peth were put on board the 'J ennv / Captain Blagdon, at 
 which time ten young artificers also shipped themselves for 
 America, paying for passage by selling themselves into 
 bondage." The same publication adds : "One of these in- 
 dented servants has enlisted into 46 regiments, been whipped 
 out of 19, sentenced to be shot 6 times, been confined in 73 
 jails, appeared under the character of a quack doctor in 7 
 kingdoms, and now is only in the 32d year of his age." 
 
 The statute of 1718 — to which I shall presently refer — 
 thanks to which so many Englishmen left their country for 
 their country's good, was not extended to Scotland until 
 half a century afterward, or in 1768. Dr. Franklin de- 
 scribes himself as protesting to the British Parliament 
 against this extension. The old law, Franklin* said, had 
 been a great grievance, but if English felons were to be re- 
 inforced bv Scotch, the burden would become intolerable. 
 At all events, he claimed reciprocity. If Scotland must send 
 her felons to the plantations, let the plantations send their 
 felons to Scotland. This statesman and philosopher consid- 
 ered the emptying of English jails upon the colonies the 
 most cruel insult ever offered bv one nation to another.* 
 
 * Benjamin Franklin had many ways of "turning a penny," and one 
 of these was the traffic in slaves and redemptioners, as the columns of 
 his newspaper, the "Pennsylvania Gazette," bear witness. He would 
 occasionally purchase the time of redemptioners and then advertise (he 
 same for sale in his paper. Some of his advertisements are as follows : 
 
 "A likely servant lad's time to be disposed of. He is fit for coun- 
 try or town business ; has four years to serve, and has been in the coun- 
 try a year and a half. Enquire of the printer." 
 
25 
 
 The names of felons transported are seldom mentioned 
 in the Gentlemen's Magazine, excepting when they returned 
 and were sentenced to be hanged. In such cases the names 
 
 "To be sold— a likely servant woman, having three years and a 
 half to serve. She is a good spinner." . 
 
 "A likely young woman's time to be disposed of; about eighteen 
 years of age, fit for town or country business, and can handle a needle 
 
 well " r 
 
 "To be sold— a likely Dutch servant girl, about thirteen years ot 
 
 age, and has five years to serve." _ _ _ . 
 
 Though there was at that time a positive sentiment in Philadelphia 
 against the buying and selling of human beings, Franklin was not 
 aV er . Siting by that sort of traffic, and he made many a venture 
 
 in the purchase and sale of negroes, hi- newspaper informing the public 
 
 "A likely young negro wench, who is a good^cook, and can wash 
 well, is to be disposed of. Enquire of the printer." 
 
 "To be sold— a likely mulatto girl, aged about 16 years; has had 
 the smallpox; is fit for either town or country; to be disposed of very 
 Enquire <>\ the printer hereof." 
 
 "To he sold— a likely negro woman, with a man-child, fit for town 
 or country business." . 
 
 ■■'I',, I,,, -old— a lusty young negro woman, fit for country business. 
 She 1 mallpox and meazles. Enquire of the printer hereof.' 
 
 "To be sold— a prime able young negro man, fit for laborious work 
 in town or country, that has had the smallpox. Also a middle aged 
 
 man, that has likewise had the smallpox. Enquire of the printer 
 
 or otherwise, they will b I to sale by public vendue on 
 
 irday, the nth of April next, at 12 o'clock, at the Indian King, in 
 
 Market _» 
 
 Some of these slaves Franklin procured from New England, where 
 then ■■ diminishing demand for them. Not all of his ven- 
 
 ture were profitable, since of one purchase of husband and 
 
 wife Franklin wrote to his mother: "We conclude to sell them both 
 the firs) good opportunity, for we do not like negro servants," with a 
 lit that "w tin aboul half what we lost." In spite of this 
 
 udice against nej Franklin took with him two negro servants 
 
 to England on hi- second visit, with slight benefit, for one who "was 
 of little use, and often in mischief." ran off within a year, and the other 
 inly "as well as I could expect in a country where there are 
 man] ns of spoiling servants, if they are ever so good." "He has 
 
 as few faults as most of them." the philosopher adds, "and I see with 
 only -He eye and hear only with one ear; so we run on pretty com- 
 fortably." 
 
 1 ■ inklin, as he grew older, changed his views on slavery, ami finally 
 became strong 1 to the whole system. When the initial aboli- 
 tion society in America was formed he became its president, and his 
 
 ne was signed to the firsl petition to Congress for the abolition of 
 the slave trade .mi act which resulted in his bein^ personally vituperated 
 on the floor of that body less than a month before his death. The de- 
 bate on tin- petition drew from him the last public paper he ever pen- 
 ned, in which he very cleverly used all the arguments of his opponents, 
 who upheld slavery, a- reasons for the suppression of the system. 
 
26 
 
 are preserved and are accessible by American genealogists 
 who go abroad to trace their ancestry. Daniel Webster, it 
 was, who said before a New England society in 1845, "Men 
 who are regardless of their ancestors are apt to be regard- 
 less of themselves." But who of us will impute a lack of 
 pride in ancestry to him who follows his string back to the 
 time we are now considering, only to find that string waxed 
 and looped at the end ? 
 
 Orders from the Privy Council or from judges, and even 
 inferior magistrates, sent felons into the American colonies 
 as early as 1618; but nothing tended so powerfully to bring 
 about such deportations as a statute of 1718 — one hundred 
 years after the first recorded case. This act provided that 
 persons convicted of clergyable offences, such as burglary, 
 robbery, perjury, forgery and theft, after being sentenced 
 to death, might, if their crimes did not seem too heinous, 
 "at the discretion of the Court, be transported to America 
 for at least seven years," remaining punishable with death 
 without further trial if they should return before the expira- 
 tion of their sentence. A reason assigned for this enact- 
 ment was the great want of servants who might be the 
 means of improving the colonial plantations and making 
 them more useful to his Majesty, King George I. 
 
 Not all of the redemptioners, however, were deported 
 criminals and soldiers, kidnapped or "spirited" women and 
 children, artizans and farmers, or people of lowly birth. 
 Some belonged to an entirely different class of people.* 
 
 *The practice of "spiriting" grew up in the reign of Charles I. and 
 continued throughout the Commonwealth period and the reign of 
 Charles II. It was an organized system of kidnapping persons, young 
 and old, usually of the laboring classes, and transporting them to the 
 plantations to be sold for the benefit of the kidnapper or shipmaster 
 to whom they were assigned. It became widely extended in England, 
 but Bristol and London were the centers of the traffic. Throughout 
 London and the parishes of Middlesex county, we are told, its agents, 
 called "spirits," were distributed — men and women, yeomen, tradesmen, 
 doctors and a class of rogues and idlers who earned a livelihood by this 
 means. The ladies of the court, and even the Mayor of Bristol, were 
 not above the suspicion of profiting by this lucrative business. All 
 manner of pretenses were used to decoy the victims aboard ships lying 
 in the Thames or to places where they could be assaulted and forcibly 
 conveyed on board, to be disposed of to the ship's company or to mer- 
 chants. The story of "Jack Ballister's Fortunes," by Howard Pyle, pub- 
 
27 
 
 In the burial ground of the old brick meeting house at 
 Calvert, Chester county, Pa., is the grave of a woman of 
 gentle birth, who voluntarily became a redemptioner, and 
 whose career offers a theme for the novelist quite as tempt- 
 ing as that with which Paul Leicester Ford has invested 
 the redemptioner, John Brereton, soldier-lover of Janice 
 Meredith. Elizabeth Maxwell was an English maiden, 
 born in the opening year of the eighteenth century. Her 
 mother and uncle, the latter being none other than Daniel 
 Defoe, the great author, frowned upon the attentions of a 
 young man in London; and angered by their treatment, she 
 left her home secretly and took passage for America. Hav- 
 ing no money with which to pay her passage, she agreed 
 with the captain of the ship to be sold as a redemptioner 
 on reaching America. Accordingly, in the fall of 1718, she, 
 being then eighteen years old, was sold at Philadelphia to 
 Andrew Job. of Calvert, Pa. While living at the home of 
 her owner, she was wooed and won by Thomas Job. a re- 
 lative of Andrew. After their marriage, she wrote to her 
 relatives in London, telling them of her circumstances and 
 surroundings. Her uncle, Daniel Defoe, replied that her 
 mother had died and left property to her by will. A list of 
 the articles came with the letter, and Defoe was desirous 
 that she should take special care of those articles which he 
 had used in his library, as they had descended to the family 
 from their Flemish ancestors, who sought refuge under the 
 banner of Queen Elizabeth from the tyranny of Philip of 
 Spain, about 1560. Among the goods were two chairs, 
 which are still in the keeping of Elizabeth Maxwell Job's 
 descendants, in Pennsylvania. This niece of the great De- 
 foe, this redemptioner of gentle birth, lived happily at Cal- 
 vert until her death in [782.* 
 
 lished in tin- St. Nicholas Magazine in 1804-5. describes the kidnapping 
 of two fictitious persons. Jack Ballister and Lawyer Burton. They were 
 assaulted and shipped from Southampton about 1718. In 1664 the abuse 
 had grown so bad that tumults were frequently raised in the streets of 
 London. It was only necessary to point t lie finger at a woman, and 
 call her a "common spirit," to raise a "ryot" against her. 
 
 ""Rambles in Colonial By-Ways," by Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Vol. 
 11. pp. 101-2. 
 
28 
 
 Many servants were of better origin and education than 
 the generality of freemen, and were frequently employed 
 in such responsible positions as teachers. Many ministers 
 were imported on conditions almost parallel with those of 
 indented servants. Col. William Preston, of Smithville, 
 Va., bought at Williamsburg, about 1776, a gentleman 
 named Palfrenan as a teacher for his family. He was a 
 poet and scholar, a correspondent and a friend of the cele- 
 brated authoress, Elizabeth Carter, and also of Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson. This man educated many of the Prestons and 
 Breckenridges in Virginia. The distinguished William C. 
 Preston, of South Carolina, was one of his pupils.* 
 
 Another redemptioner of high degree was a lawyer and 
 political offender named Henry Justice, who was deported 
 to Virginia in 1736 for stealing out of the library of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, a bible and prayer book, valued at 
 25 pounds; a book on horsemanship, valued at 10 pounds, 
 besides several other books and tracts. The transatlantic 
 career of this purlioner of bibles and prayer books has not 
 yet been ascertained, but there is a possibility that he be- 
 came the instructor of Washington in his boyhood. Jonathan 
 Boucher, rector at Annapolis for many years before the 
 Revolution, and tutor to Washington's step-son, Parke Cus- 
 tis, and who, in 1773, lamented that two-thirds of the Mary- 
 land schoolmasters were convicts, relates that George Wash- 
 ington, with whom he claimed very particular intimacy and 
 friendship, "had no other education than reading, writing 
 
 *Intermarriage of free persons and servants was very common. 
 Masters sometimes bought female servants for their wives, and it was 
 not uncommon for men servants to marry into their master's families 
 when they gained their freedom. One writer in Virginia — Bullock, in 
 1649 — advises English fathers to send their daughters to Virginia rather 
 than their sons, and promises that they "will receive instead of give por- 
 tions for them." "Maid servants," he says, "of good, honest stock, may 
 choose their husbands out of the better sort of people. Have sent over 
 many, but never could keep one at my plantation three months, except 
 a poor filly wench made fit to foille to set of beauty, and yet a poor 
 young fellow served twelve months for her." He tells men servants 
 how they may prosper by their service and lay up a competence "and 
 then if he looks to God. he may see himself fit to wed a good man's 
 daughter." — White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia. 
 
29 
 
 and accounts, which he was taught by a convict servant 
 whom his father had bought for a school-master." "Not 
 a ship arrives." adds Boucher, "with either redemptioners. 
 or convicts, in which schoolmasters are not as regularly ad- 
 vertised for sale as weavers, tailors, or any other trade; 
 with little other difference that I can hear of, except per- 
 haps that the schoolmasters do not usually fetch so good 
 a price as the weavers and tail" >rs." ::: 
 
 *The London Magazine furnishes the following account— much 
 a bridj ' Henry Justice, lawyer and possible tutor of 
 
 Washington, in his boyhood: 
 
 ■ . May 3, 1736, came on * * * * the trial of Henry Jus- 
 
 of tlie Middle Temple, for stealing out of the library of Trinity- 
 College, Cambridge, a Field's Bible with cuts and common prayer, value 
 £25; Newcastle's Horsemanship, value £10. several other books of great 
 va l U( - em out of books, etc. * * * * The coun- 
 
 sel of Mr. Justice were Mr. Winne, Mr. Agar and Mr. Robinson. 
 (After many objections, pleading not guilty, he was proved so by wit- 
 nesses; he then claimed to he a member of the Trinity corporation, etc., 
 Inn the jury found him guilty of felony within benefit of clergy. He 
 was then charged with stealing either books, and after six hours pleaded 
 guilty.) Mond. 10. Mr. Justice, being brought to the Old Bailey to 
 ntence, d irt — Lord Hardwick, Mr. Justice Den- 
 
 ton, etc. — that as they had a discretionary power either to transport or to 
 burn in the hand, etc., he might not he sent abroad, which would, first, 
 be a great injury to his children, and to his client-, with several of 
 whom lie had great concerns. Secondly, for the sake of the University. 
 
 II,- had numbers of 1 ks belonging to them, some sent to Holland, 
 
 and it he were transported he could not make restitution. As for him- 
 self, he would rather go abroad, having lived in credit before this un- 
 happy mistake, a- he called it. lie hoped the gentlemen of the Lniver- 
 
 several of whom hi Dresent, would intercede for him. 
 
 mty Recorder, in a very handsome speech, commiserated 
 
 his case, telling" him that his education, profession, etc., greatly aggra- 
 
 1 hi- crime. After which he pronounced sentence, that he must be 
 transported to some one of his Majesty's plantations in America— there 
 to remain -even years — and be put to death if he returned," etc. 
 
 It will he observed that the particular colony to which this legal 
 luminary wa- doomed is not mentioned. Possibly, however, it is not 
 
 md discovery. Seven days afterwards, May 17, the Gentleman's 
 Magazine chronicle is: "A hundred felons-convict walked from New- 
 
 to Blackfryars, and thence went in a close lighter on board a -hip 
 M Blackwall. But Weathercock, the attorney; Messrs. Riffhead, Vaughn 
 and Bird went to Blackwall in two hackney coaches, and Henry Justice, 
 er-at-law, in another, two hours after the walking felon., 
 tided by Jonathan Forward, Esq. These five gentlemen of distinc- 
 tion were accommodated with the captain's cabin, which _ they stored 
 with provisions, etc., for their voyage and travels." — American Histori- 
 cal Register. 
 
3° 
 
 The early records contain many references to these servi- 
 tors or redemptioners fleeing from their masters, who were 
 thereupon required to advertise them or be liable for their 
 maintenance wherever captured. Some of these advertise- 
 ments, as we find them in the files of the old newspapers of 
 that day, are interesting reading. The curious garb worn 
 by the runaways — relics of finery, sometimes indicating 
 their gentle birth ; the references to branding, showing the 
 prevalence of that barbarous custom as a punishment for 
 crime ; the peculiar descriptions of some of the servants ; 
 the "leering down look." "the proud, hambling gait," "he 
 walks crimplm," "he's so prodigious a liar that if observed 
 he may be easily discovered by it." "he has a long nose and 
 a wild look," "he goes crooked and groans very much in his 
 sleep," "he speaks by clusters," "he talks West Country," 
 etc. — these throw a flood of light on the condition of the 
 toiling masses in those days. 
 
 Sometimes a man would come into this country free and 
 become a servitor through misfortune. Thus we find 
 Francis Smith, of Burlington, advertising in the Pennsyl- 
 vania Gazette, in 1739, for the recovery of a runaway "West 
 Country servant man, named John Wood, aged 40 vears. 
 He has worked in and about London, has been in this coun- 
 try about ten or eleven years, has worked in Chester and 
 Philadelphia counties and in New Jersey. Pie says he came 
 in free, but falling into bad company was brought into 
 trouble and so became a servant."* 
 
 *A few advertisements, copied from the newspapers of that day, 
 will illustrate the manner of advertising these runaway servants, and 
 will give us an insight into a custom which was maintained in New 
 Jersey for so many years : 
 
 From the American Weekly Mercury, July 11-18, 1728. 
 
 Run away the 8th of July, from William Reed, of Great Egg Har- 
 bour, a servant man named Lawrence Conor, an Irish Man of a short 
 Stature, aged about 26 Years of a homely complection and down Look, 
 his Hair Cut off, a black Beaver Hat, a Brown Duroy Coat Jacket and 
 Breeches of Duroy trimed with Black, with Silk Puffs to the Breeches, 
 one of the Puffs being out, moss coloured yarn Stockings, a Pair of 
 Wooden heel'd Shoes, a pair of double barr'd Silver Shoe Buckles, a 
 
3i 
 
 pair of Women's Silver Buckles, took away with him a large Dark 
 Brown Mare, with a Star in her Forehead Branded on the Buttock with 
 O. B., the Men's Buckles mark't with A. R., the Woman's Buckles 
 mark't with A. A. Whosoever takes up and secures the said Servant 
 so as his -aid Master may have him again, shall have Three Pounds 
 Reward and reasonable Charges paid by William Reed. 
 
 From the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 19-26, 1735. 
 
 Run away the 18th instant, from Thomas Ustick, of Second River 
 in Newark. East Jersey, an Irish Servant Man named Owen Ward, 
 about 23 Years of Age, a slender grown Man, with a large Scar on the 
 
 side of his Face under his Eye, and the forefinger of one of his 
 Hand- ha- lost the first Joint; professes to lie Husbandman and Miner. 
 Had on a Hat scallop'd round the Brim, a white Wig, and a blue check- 
 ed cotton Shirt. He was taken tip and imprison'd at Burlington, and 
 
 ;■ taken from thence he made his Escape. Whoever takes up and 
 brings him to Thomas Dunning at the George Inn in Philadelphia or to 
 his said Master, shall have Forty Shillings Reward and Reasonable 
 Charges paid by Tin una- Ustick or Tin una- Dunning. 
 
 From the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 7-14, 1739. 
 
 Run away on the oth In-t.. from Abraham Bryan, of Burlington 
 County, in West New Jersey, an Irish Servant Man, belonging to John 
 Macontish, named Edward Curry, aged about 26 Near-, -hort and well 
 j'd. brown complexion'd, and has the Brogue of his Ton- 
 Mad 1.11 when he went away, a pretty good Kersey Coat with Brass 
 Button-, a white flannel jacket lae'd down before, without Sleeves, old 
 
 ther Breeches, old yarn Stockings, old peeked toe'd Shoes, and a 
 pretty good Fell Hat. Ik- served a time in Chester County, and was 
 some time in Chester Can]. Whoever takes up the said Servant, and 
 secures him either in Chester Gaol in Pennsylvania, or the Work-House 
 in Philadelphia shall have Twenty Shilling- Reward and reasonable 
 Charges paid by Abraham Bryan. 
 
 'From the Pennsylvania Gazette of the same date. 
 
 Run away Yesterday Morning, from William Tateham, of Glo 
 ter County, in Wesl New Jersey, an Irish Servant Lad. named John 
 
 :i. aged about 1S Years, shorl and well-set, round fae'd, freash col- 
 oured, black curl'd Hair, ha- the Brogue on hi- Tongue; Had on a 
 brown homespun Coat, two Ozenbrigs Shirts and a tine one. two pair 
 of ozenbrigs Trowsers, blue worsted Stockings, peeked toe'd Calf-skin 
 Shoes, and a half-worn Fell Hat. He went in company with one Den- 
 nis M'glaugh (who is advertised and Forty Shillings Reward offer'd for 
 taking him) in a small new light Wherry painted red. belonging to 
 John Ladd, inn. Whoever take- up and secures the -aid Servant and 
 Wherry, so that they may he had again, shall have Forty Shillings Re- 
 ward for the Servant and Ten Shillings for the Wherry, and the reason- 
 able Charges paid by William Tateham and John Ladd, jun. 
 
 From the Pennsylvania Gazette, March i-S, 1739. 
 
 Bun away on the 2d Inst, from John Burr, of Burlington County, 
 an English Servant Man. named I-aac Tailor, (but will change his 
 name) a lusty young red-fae'd, red-headed Fellow, with a crooked Fin- 
 
32 
 
 These advertisements are found only in Boston, New 
 York and Philadelphia newspapers, for the reason that up to 
 about 1750 the only periodicals in the country were pub- 
 lished in those three cities. Nor was their publication as 
 regular as we would expect in these days. The printer's 
 welfare was considered, rather than the public convenience. 
 In the Pennsylvania Gazette of July 22 to August 22, 1736, 
 we find this apology by Benjamin Franklin, then a young 
 man who had established the Gazette in 1729 : "The printer 
 hopes the irregular publication of this paper will be excused 
 a few times by his Town Readers, on consideration of his 
 being at Burlington with the Press, laboring for the pub- 
 lick good, to make money more plentiful." This manner 
 of "making money more plentiful," was by the issuing of 
 forty thousand pounds of paper bills of credit by the Pro- 
 vince of New Jersey, for the printing of which Franklin 
 had received the contract at 160 pounds, although William 
 Bradford, of the New York Gazette, had offered to do the 
 work for 100 pounds. "Such," said the indignant Brad- 
 ford in his paper, "is the effect of Party Faction and prej- 
 udice. But it's no matter; it's the country's money, and 
 if the publick cannot afford to pay well, who can? It's 
 proper to serve a Friend when there's an opportunity." 
 
 ger on his left Hand, small white Specks on his upper Fore Teeth, his 
 right Shin very sore, speaks West Country. Had on when he went away 
 a dirty Leather Jacket, no Hat, an ozenbrigs Shirt, old dirty Leather 
 Breeches, black and white yarn Stockings, very large strong Shoes ; he 
 stole two very lightish colour'd kersey Coats with large Brass Buttons, 
 without Lining; He was imported about two Years since into Virginia, 
 afterwards put into Dover Gaol, and sold to one Richard Manwarring, 
 from whom he run away and chang'd his Name, was put into Philadel- 
 phia Gaol, and sold to said John Burr; from whom he run away on 
 Sunday Night the 25th of February past, chang'd his Name, was ad- 
 vertis'd and taken. He was taken up last Night, by two young Men, who 
 attempting to bring him to his said Master, he stabb'd them both, which 
 'tis thought to one of them will be mortal. Whoever takes up and se- 
 cures the said Servant in Irons, in any Gaol, so that he may be brought 
 to Justice, shall have six Pounds Reward, and reasonable Charges paid 
 by John Burr. 
 
33 
 
 As the wealth and population of the colonies increased, 
 the importation of redemptioners became a matter of busi- 
 ness. A class of men speculated in these emigrants much 
 the same as they would in cattle. They purchased them 
 from the master of the vessel or from the merchants to whom 
 they were consigned, and then drove them through the 
 country, to be sold to willing" purchasers at a considerable 
 advance in price. 
 
 Those engaged in the business were stigmatized as soul- 
 drivers by some people, and. forsooth, they were generally 
 men without much soul or conscience. Nor were the mas- 
 ters of the vessels at all particular as to the character of 
 those whom they imported for these soul-drivers. As has 
 been shown, they brought into the colonies, in the character 
 of redemptive servants, criminals purchased from the jails, 
 and dissolute women from London and other large cities. 
 In New Jersey there were, besides the criminals, represen- 
 tatives of the various strata of society — sons of gin id fami- 
 lies, street waifs, soldiers of fortune, young girls fresh from 
 farms, some in search of better homes and some seeking ad- 
 venture or desiring to reform wayward lives. 
 
 The business as a whole became such an evil that statutes 
 were passed, forbidding masters of vessels from landing 
 convicts in the provinces. A violation of this law was pun- 
 ishable by line and the penalty was extended to merchants 
 who imported, sold or disposed of such convicts. 
 
 Finally, the business of importing and selling redemp- 
 tioners, good, bad and indifferent, became somewhat pre- 
 carious, many of the servants escaping from their owners 
 while travelling through the country to find a market. 
 About the year [795 the trade was almost abandoned. It 
 is related of a soul driver named McCullough, who became 
 noted in the trade, that he made several trips to Europe 
 and gathered droves of redemptioners for the American 
 market. On one occasion McCullough was outwitted by 
 a man called "Terry." who was one of his herd of human 
 chattels, and who contrived to be the last of the lot offered 
 3 
 
34 
 
 for sale. "Terry" was Irish and McCullough was Irish, 
 too. One night "Terry" and his master lodged at a tavern, 
 the landlord of which was ignorant of the fact that one 
 of the strangers was a redemptioner. In the morning the 
 young Irishman arose early and contrived to sell his mas- 
 ter to the landlord. Pocketing the money he casually in- 
 formed the landlord that his new servant, still asleep in an 
 upper room, although tolerably clever in other respects, was 
 rather saucy and a little given to lying. In fact, he had 
 presumption enough at times to endeavor to pass himself 
 off as a freeman, and that possibly he might represent him- 
 self as such to his new owner ! By the time the soul- 
 driver was up and doing and the landlord undeceived, 
 the son of Erin had gained such a start that pursuit was im- 
 possible. 
 
 About 1785, there was an improvement in the condition 
 of the redemptioner. and in the terms of the contract. In 
 the latter it was stipulated that the bond-servant should have 
 sufficient meat, drink, lodging and apparel, and two freedom 
 suits when the term of service expired. One of these free- 
 dom suits must be new or ten pounds currency might be 
 o-iven in its stead.* 
 
 In New Jersey, according to "Learning and Spicer," no 
 white servant, if sold or bound after seventeen years of age, 
 could serve above four years. If under seventeen, he was 
 free after reaching his majority. At the expiration of ser- 
 vice, the master was obliged to supply the servant with two 
 good suits of clothing, one good falling axe, one good hoe 
 and seven bushels of Indian corn. If so abused by a master 
 or mistress as to lose an eve or a tooth, the servant was to be 
 immediately freed. Aiding or abetting in the escape of 
 
 *The first record of the transfer of a redemptioner, previous to the 
 grant to Penn. was at a cor.rt held at Upland, now Chester. Pa., Tunc 
 1.3, 1677, and this transfer is set forth in the quaint phraseology of the 
 day : 
 
 "Mr. John Test brought in Court a certaine man servant named 
 William Still, being a taylor by traede. whome hee the sd Test did ac- 
 knowledge to have sold unto Cap'n Edmund Cantwell for the space and 
 tearme of foure yeares. beginning from the first of April Last past : The 
 sd William Still declared in Court to bee willing to serve the said Cap'n 
 Cantwell the aboved tearmes of foure yeares." 
 
35 
 
 a redemptioner from his master was a statutory offense, 
 punishable with a fine and damages for loss of services.* 
 
 Twenty pounds or more was the price at this time 
 for which a redemptioner usually sold,, whether man or 
 woman, and whether the time of service was long or short. 
 Children brought eight to ten pounds. In Pennsylvania, 
 should the man-servant serve faithfully and well for fourt 
 
 *In but few cases did the court permit servants' offenses to be 
 punished by fine; the usual penalty was whipping or additional servi- 
 tude to the master or to the colony. In Virginia, in 1640. a number of 
 servants, fur conspiracy "to run out of the colony and enticing divers 
 others to lie actors in the same conspiracy," were sentenced to be se- 
 verely whipped and to serve the colony for a period of seven years in 
 iron-". Samuel Powell, for purloining a pair of breeches and other 
 thing- from the houseof Captain John Howe, deceased. was_ sentenced 
 to "pay ffower dayes work to Elias Taylor with all charges of the court 
 and the .sheriff'- (Tees, and to sit in the stockes on the next Sabbath day, 
 witli a ribell in his halt, from the beginning of morninge prayer until 
 the end of the sermon, with a pair of breeches about his neck." 
 
 A case which musl Ik- regarded as very exceptional occurred in 
 Virginia in 1655. An apprentice complained that his master made him 
 work on Sunday, and further misused him "by fastening a lock with a 
 chain to it and tying ami fettering him to the shoppe. and that said 
 master, hi- wife and mother did most cruelly and inhumanly beat his 
 said apprentice and also whipped him til he was very bloody and his 
 flesh raw ■ over a greal part of hi- body, and then salted him and held 
 him naked to the fire, being SO salted to add to his pain." 
 
 "More than anything else." says James Curtis Ballagh. in his mono- 
 graph on white servitude in Virginia, "the habit on the part of servants 
 themselves of absconding from their master's service, stealing their 
 master's good- and enticing other- in go with them, worked to the detri- 
 ment of the masters. The courts attempted by the most severe punish- 
 ments I" put a stop in the practice. Whipping, additions of time, brand- 
 ing, and even servitude in iron-, proved ineffectual. The possibility of 
 entire escape from servitude or of service on better terms proved too 
 great a temptation, and with an unruly class of servants such attempts 
 became habitual. Statute after statute was passed by the colonies, regu- 
 lating the punishment and providing for the pursuit and recapture of 
 runaways: but although laws gradually became severer and finally made 
 no distinction in treatment between runaway servants and slaves in 
 -nine nf the colonics, it wa- impossible to entirely put a stop to the habit 
 so long as the system itself lasted." 
 
 fSeveral acts were passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature regulat- 
 ing the trade in redemptioners. By the act of 1700 the servant, at the 
 expiration of the term of servitude, was to have two "complete suits of 
 apparel, whereof one -hall be new, and shall also be furnished with one 
 new axe, one new grubbing hoe and one weeding hoe. at the charge of 
 the master or mistress." Tin- continued to be the law of Pennsylvania 
 until the an of March o. 1771. repealed so much of the law of 1700 as 
 related to the furnishing of a new axe, a grubbing and a weeding hoe. 
 
3^ 
 
 years, he was to have, besides two suits of clothes, a grub- 
 bing hoe, a weeding hoe and a new axe. For each day 
 he absented himself from labor without his master's leave, 
 five days were added to his service time, and if he married 
 without permission, he was required to serve an additional 
 year.* 
 
 Save so far as the laws hindered, ship-captains were free 
 to do with their bondsmen as they pleased. They parted 
 husband and wife and separated children from parents; 
 nay, when the yellow fever was devastating Philadelphia, 
 in 1793, one brutal captain shocked the people of Chester 
 by sailing up the Delaware with a cargo of redemptioners, 
 and seeking to sell them as nurses for the smallpox patients 
 in Philadelphia. t 
 
 From more than one of this cargo of lowly redemptioners 
 there has descended several generations of brave and hon- 
 est people — stalwart sons of sturdy sires. \\ nat matters 
 it if some of the sires were not so sturdy ? " Honor and 
 shame," says Pope, "from no condition rise; act well your 
 part, there all the honor lies.'' It is no stain upon the gal- 
 lant Custer, slaughtered with his band of 200 by the horde 
 
 ^Registry of the Redemptioners, 1785-1817, in Pennsylvania His- 
 torical Society. 
 
 fThe last sale of a redemptioner in the vicinity of Philadelphia was 
 in 181 1. Abraham Peters, of Lancaster county, was hauling grain to the 
 mills on the Brandywine, near Wilmington, and was requested by his 
 sifter to buy a small German girl. The vessels then stopped at Chester. 
 and after disposing of his grain Peters drove to Chester and purchased 
 for $25 an orphan eirl named "Katy." The mother had died at sea, 
 leaving Katy and her sister to be disposed of as redemptioners. The 
 master of the vessel wished to sell the two sisters to one person for 
 $40, but Mr. Peters declined to take more than one. He promised, how- 
 ever, to secure, if possible, a purchaser for the other girl at $15. On his 
 return home he met a Quaker gentleman and his wife, who wished to 
 buy Katy. Peters would not sell, but told them of her sister, who could 
 be bought for $15, and accordingly the old Quaker and his wife went to 
 Chester and purchased Katy's sister. Mr. Peters and the Quaker had 
 previously exchanged adclres-es and promised to keep the two sisters in 
 correspondence with each other. Both girls found good homes and 
 frequently wrote to each other. They grew to womanhood, and Katy 
 married a worthy German baker named Lutz in Philadelphia. She es- 
 teemed it a privilege to visit her former mistress, to whom she was ever 
 thankful for the religious training received at her Lancaster county 
 home. 
 
37 
 
 of Sioux on the Big Horn in 1876, that his grandfather 
 
 was a Hessian named Kuster, captured by Gates in 1777. 
 Nor does it matter that the brave captain. James Lawrence, 
 whose dying words, ."Don't give up the Ship," became the 
 watchword of the American Navy, and that other distin- 
 guished naval commander. William Bainbridge, both native- 
 born Jersevmen — the one born at Burlington, the other at 
 Princeton — nor does it matter. I say. that these two patriots 
 were the sons of ////patriotic sires — men who made them- 
 selves obnoxious during the Revolution by their strong 
 Tory proclivities. The hero of the •'Chesapeake" was re- 
 lated to that branch of the Lawrence family of Monmouth 
 county, who were ardent tories — two of them jailed for 
 disloyalty, and a third, the last royal high sheriff of Mon- 
 mouth county and colonel of the loyal "Volunteers," cap- 
 tured on Staten Island by Colonel Mathias Ogden in 1777. 
 
 Once in the hands of a new master, says the historian 
 of Xew Jersey. Francis B. Lee.- '"the life of the redemp- 
 tioner was more distasteful than that of the slave. Some 
 owners recognized that their tenure over the life and liberty 
 of the redemptioner was brief and uncertain, and moved by 
 selfish considerations, they cruelly overworked their bond- 
 men. As a result, there was a time when the redemptioner 
 often performed more degrading labor than the slave. 
 
 At the conclusion of their terms of service, the redemp- 
 tioners, as has been stated, were mostly merged into the 
 mass of white population without any special taint of servi- 
 tude. A manuscripl letter of Jonathan Dickinson, of Penn- 
 svlvania, dated 1722, says: "Many who have come over 
 under covenants for four years are now masters of great 
 estates." Watson, in his "Annals of Philadelphia," writ- 
 ing in 1842, savs. "1 have knowledge of two or three among 
 us. even within my memory, who rose to riches and credit 
 here and have left line families. ( hie great man, before 
 my time, had been sold in Maryland as an offender from 
 
 *"New Jersey as a Colony and Stair," Vol. I, p. 201. 
 
3S 
 
 Ireland. While serving his master as a common servant, 
 he showed much ability in managing for him an important 
 lawsuit, for which he instantly gave him his freedom. He 
 came to Philadelphia and amassed a great fortune in landed 
 estate, now of great value among his heirs."* 
 
 The case of Lord Altham, who was enticed aboard a 
 ship at Dublin by an inhuman uncle and sent to this country 
 in 1728, when a lad of thirteen, and who served out his 
 term of servitude as James Annesley with a farmer on the 
 Lancaster road, forty miles from Philadelphia, is a curious 
 and interesting recital. This true story furnished the 
 ground work for the once-popular novel "Roderick Ran- 
 dom." The Annesley family, to which this high-born re- 
 demptioner belonged, is the same from which the celebrated 
 John Wesley was descended by his mother. 
 
 James Annesley was the son of Arthur Annesley (Lord 
 Altham), who married Mary Sheffield, natural daughter of 
 the Earl of Buckingham. The son was born in 171 5, and 
 the next year the parents disagreed and separated. The 
 father, contrary to the wish of the mother, took possession 
 of the child, and manifested much fondness for him until 
 he formed an alliance with a Miss Gregory in 1722, at 
 which time the mother died. The father was persuaded to 
 place the boy at school in Dublin. Five years later, Lord 
 Altham died and his brother Richard, wishing to possess the 
 estate and title, proceeded to get rid of the boy. He had 
 him enticed on board an American vessel which sailed from 
 Dublin in April, 1728. This vessel reached Philadelphia, 
 and the boy James Annesley (heir to the title and estates 
 of Lord Altham) was sold as a redemptioner, being then 
 but thirteen years old. He served twelve years, or until 
 
 *The general effects of white servitude were much the same in all 
 the colonies, but the influence on internal development was more clear- 
 ly marked in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In Pennsyl- 
 vania the large number of German settlers who had been driven from 
 home by religious or political persecution, became the most valued of 
 citizens. Kahn, in his "Travels." says they sold themselves to learn 
 the language or methods of agriculture. 
 
39 
 
 1/40, when a chance acquaintance led to his return home 
 the following year. Two Irishmen, John and William 
 Broders, travelling- westward from Philadelphia on the 
 Lancaster road in 1740, stopped at a house "near the forty 
 milestone." where James Annesley was in service with an 
 old German. These three men entered into conversation 
 and found that all were from Dumaine, in the county of 
 Wexford, Ireland, and that James Annesley was none other 
 than the long lost son of Lord Altham. The two Broders 
 volunteered to go hack to Ireland and testify to their dis- 
 covery in Pennsylvania. James Annesley stated his case to 
 Robert Ellis, a Philadelphia lawyer, who procured for him 
 a passage to Admiral Vernon, then in the West Indies, by 
 whom he was afterward landed in London. Unfortunately, 
 shortly after his arrival in London. James Annesley quar- 
 reled and in self defence killed a man, for which he had to 
 stand trial. Notwithstanding the efforts of his unnatural 
 uncle to have him convicted of deliberate murder. James 
 was acquitted. Suit was then ( 1743) brought against the 
 uncle to recover his father's estates, and the two Irishmen 
 from Pennsylvania were present as witnesses. Judgment 
 was given in favor of the redemptioner. The uncle, how- 
 ever, appealed to the House of Lords and while the case 
 was pending, James Annesley died, leaving his uncle, a fin- 
 ished villain, in quiet possession of his ill-gotten estate and 
 title. 
 
 Occasionally the positions of master and servant were re- 
 versed. The latter, on obtaining his freedom, would rent 
 land and by dint of prudence and industry become in time a 
 freeholder. His sons would marry the daughters of his 
 former master, and there are families in New [ersev to- 
 day, reputable and rich, whose ancestry goes hack to the 
 days ot servitude, whose progenitors were bond-servants, 
 whose inherited seal is the "L. S." on a bond of indenture 
 and whose only coat of arms is an axe and grubbing hoe, 
 a pick and a spade ! 
 
FEB 21 1903 
 
 40 
 
 BEGINNING OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN NEW YORK. 
 [See pp. 5-8 of this Monograph.] 
 The first negro slaves brought to Manhattan Island were eleven in 
 number. The date of their coming is fixed by an act of the Director 
 and Council of New Netherland, passed February 25, 1644, which re- 
 cites that Paul D' Angola and ten others, who had served the West In- 
 dia Company for eighteen or nineteen years, having petitioned to be 
 liberated, the Director and Council had granted their request, on condi- 
 tion that their children then born should remain in bondage, and that 
 they themselves should "pay for the freedom they receive, each man for 
 himself annually, as long as he lives, to the West India Company or 
 its deputy here, thirty skepels [barn baskets, each containing three 
 pecks, or 22 y 2 bushels in all] of Maize or Wheat Pease or Beans and 
 one Fat Hog, valued at twenty guilders [$8]." 
 
 In 1628, two years after the arrival of Paul D' Angola and his com- 
 panions, three negro women slaves arrived, and from this small begin- 
 ning began the slavery system which existed in New York until 1827. 
 
 In September, 1664, New Amsterdam was invaded by the English, 
 to whom the province of New Netherland was surrendered. Peter 
 Stuyvesant's register of events attending this attack says: "The Eng- 
 lish chased and overhauled a boat with negroes belonging to the Burgo- 
 masters of the city of Amsterdam, in Holland, but the negroes had fled 
 with a Dutchman to the wo. ids." 
 
 The West India Company passed severe criticism on the conduct of 
 Stuyvesant in making so poor a defence of New Amsterdam. In his 
 answer to the States-General, in 1666, Stuyvesant says, in accounting 
 for the limited food supply, which was one of the causes of the sur- 
 render: "About fourteen to sixteen days before the arrival of the Eng- 
 lish frigates, there arrived and came in the ship Gideon, between 300 
 and 400 half-starved negroes and negresses, who alone, exclusive of the 
 garrison, required 100 skepels [seventy-five bushels] of wheat per week." 
 Instead of the little plots of land along the east and west shores of 
 the Hudson, which the Dutch permitted each slave to cultivate on his 
 own account, the English gave them pious injunctions. Piety indeed 
 reigned all through the English slave holding. As early as 1660 the 
 English government gave these instructions to the Council for foreign 
 plantations : "You are most especially to take an effectual care for the 
 propogacon of the Gospell in the Several! Forraine Plantacons. * * 
 * And you are to consider how such of the Natives or such as are 
 purchased by you from other parts to be servants or slaves may be best 
 invited to the Christian Faith, and be made capable of being baptized 
 thereunto." 
 
 There was a difficulty attending the conversion and baptism of 
 slaves, however. The belief existed here, as elsewhere, that the con- 
 version of a slave emancipated him, and this fact was a great hindrance 
 to evangelization. Attorney-General York, of England, had said that 
 negroes, being pagans, might be held in slavery. The British courts 
 followed this opinion until 1772. when Lord Mansfield rendered his 
 judgment, in the case of a negro named Somerset, that as soon as a 
 negro set his foot on the soil of the British Islands, he became free. 
 As late as 1817, when the last important act in regard to slavery was 
 passed in New York, which substantially abolished slavery in that State 
 after July 4, 1827, it was enacted that the marriage of slaves should be 
 valid, "provided that nothing in this section contained shall be deemed 
 or construed to manumit any such slave or slaves." 
 
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