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

4. A Mild Slavery?

A Mild Slavery? IN THE 18305 ALEXANDER COVENTRY, who spent much of his life in the lower Hudson River valley, set down the impressions he had formed in the iy8os and 17905 of the conditions of blacks in that region. Though these blacks were then enslaved the writer felt "warranted in asserting that the laboring class in no country lived more easy, were better clothed and fed, or had more of life."! The assessment may have been tinged with nostalgia, but Coventry's judgment merely echoed those of other observers of slaveryin New York, and indeed in the North as a whole. Haifa century earlier the marquis de Barbe-Marbois had described the area north of Pennsylvania as a "peaceful and happy refuge for negroes." Not only were examples of severity rare, he declared, but the slaves "are here regarded as being part of the family; they are assiduously cared for when sick; they are well fed and well clothed."2 Just over a decade later, in the 17905, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, a staunch opponent of slavery and probably the most perspicacious of the French travelers, had reached a similar conclusion. Though he deplored the illogical adherence of New Yorkers to slavery La RochefoucauldLiancourt still had grudgingly to admit that "slaves are generally treated with greater mildness by their masters in the state of New York, and less oppressed with labour, than they are in the southern states."3 These quotes contain essential elements of the myth of the mild nature of the northern slave regime. Like most myths this one was partially based on fact, in this case on real dissimilarities between the slave systems of the North and the South. Northern slavery was neither centered around the growing of staple crops such as 4 8o Blacks tobacco, rice, and cotton nor based on a plantation model. Indeed, the eclectic mix of activities that developed on the patchwork of small farms and urban areas north of the Mason-Dixon line would later be called by Ira Berlin the northern nonplantation system of slavery.4 In this area slaveholdingswere small,typicallyconsisting of one or two slaves,and blackswere often housed under the same roof as their owner. This close physical proximity—on occasion slaves and owners even labored together in the fields or workshops —and the family-based nature of the institution were generally believed to prevent the cruel and violent excesses of slaverythat occurred on plantations in other parts of the hemisphere. Certainly, few would have doubted that the northern slave had a better time of it than a slave toiling on a tobacco or rice plantation in the South. Yet comparative judgments can produce confusion unless what is being compared is precisely defined.5 Slavery in the northern states was certainly different from slavery in the South, but as we shall see it was not necessarily milder. Nevertheless, because contemporary material on the day-to-day lives of New York and New Jersey slaves is difficult to come by and because it is almost invariably based on the assumption that slavery was milder in a nonplantation setting, the myth must still provide the starting point for our examination. Unless we can fully understand the basis of these conclusions and their widespread acceptance there is little chance of getting beyond the mainly white sources and reaching the world of the slaves. THE DEVELOPMENT of the myth that northern slavery was benign was closely associated with the growth of antislavery opinion in the north Atlantic world in the second half of the eighteenth century and particularly in the years after the American Revolution. In the case of New York City and its hinterland the myth functioned as a defense of the institution, deflecting the main thrust of antislavery criticism and almost certainly delaying the passage of an abolition bill. Though the farmers, professionals, artisans, and merchants of this area were the heaviest users of slave labor in the North, New Yorkers simply could not see a connection between their own benevolent version of slavery and the institution excoriated in antislavery tracts. The "pious pornography" discussed in the previous chapter probably reinforced these attitudes. It may have provided a A Mild Slavery? 81 good read, but was hardly a call to action in New York and New Jersey. Slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line wasrarely even mentioned , and readers easily managed to dissociate the violence and cruelty graphically...