Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810

1. Slavery in New York City

1 Slavery in New York City IN THE EARLY HOURS of a September morning in 1794, the Fair American drifted gently on the tide into New York harbor. Awakened by unaccustomed sounds and eager for his first glimpse of America, William Strickland, an English gentleman farmer, hurried on deck. His first reaction was one of disappointment. He had expected to be intrigued by the unfamiliar sights of a New World city. Instead, he beheld "a forest of masts, some hundreds of vessels surrounding," just as one might expect to see "on the Thames below London bridge." As Strickland poked inquisitively around the city during the next fewdayshis sense of disappointment deepened. Had he traveled so far,he wondered, merely "to be sett down again in the country I quitted?" One contrast, however, was too vivid to miss: the "greater number of the Blacksparticularly of women and children in the streets who may be seen of all shades till the stain is entirely worne out."[ What Strickland considered remarkableNew Yorkersmust easily have accepted, for slavery and blacks had long been important and familiar elements in their lives. Through most of the eighteenth century their city had ranked second only to Charlestown in the number of slaves owned by its inhabitants. According to the 1771 census, the last taken during the colonial period, blacks were 14.3 percent of the total population. Patrick M'Robert, a traveler visiting New York City in 1774, had commented in a similar fashion to Strickland that "it rather hurts an Europian eye to see so many negro slaves upon the streets." Slavery waswell established in the immediate hinterland too, since farmers on the western end of Long Island and in the parts of New Jersey that supplied New York with 4 Whites food customarily relied on black slaves for their labor requirements. In 1771, 20 percent of the population in Richmond and Queens counties were slaves. Even more strikingly, one in every three residents of Kings County was a slave, a ratio that would not have been out of place in the South.2 Yet the extent and significance of such slaveholding in and around New York in the eighteenth century have remained hidden, in large part because those who have studied the subject have rarely gone beyond the sporadic comments of travelers and the odd total from an eighteenth-century census. For a more accurate and comprehensive picture of the institution we must turn to the precise statistical data collected in the postRevolutionary period in census schedules, tax lists, and city directories . NEW YORK RECOVERED rapidly from the devastation of the British occupation. Its population wasprobablynot much more than 12,000 when the war ended, but by the time of the first federal census in 1790 there were 31,229 people living within the city limits.3 Slavery, too, had been reestablished, and the number of slaves would continue to increase until after the turn of the century. But the institution never regained fully its former standingin the city. The growth of the slave population in the two decades after the Revolution, although substantial, could not match the dramatic expansion in the number of New York residents. Furthermore, in the colonial period virtually all blacks had been slaves,but in the aftermath of the Revolutionary war this was no longer the case. Of 3,092 blacks residing in New York in 1790 about two-thirds were slaves.4 Consequently, although blacks composed about 10 percent of the city's inhabitants at the time of Strickland's arrival in 1794, the dependence of New Yorkers on slavery, as measured by the slave proportion of the total population, was at a lower level than earlier in the century. Nevertheless, slavery was far from being of negligible importance in the city. Even though the enslaved percentage of the population was slipping, this was attributable in large part to the vigorous demographic growth of New York. It was still the case that in absolute terms the number of slaveswas increasing significantly. Of course gross or percentage figures can give only the bare outlines of the institution of slavery, particularlywhen, as in New York, slave- Slavery in New York City TABLE 1 Wealth and Slaveholding in New York City in 1789-1790 Decile£1,210-16,430 650-1,200 400-650 250-400 180-250 100-180 80-100 50-80 20-50 0-20 N 424...