History of slavery in New York (state)
The Philipsburg Proclamation promised freedom to enslaved persons who left rebel masters, and thousands moved to the city for refuge with the British.
)[3]: 44 After the American Revolution, the New York Manumission Society was founded in 1785 to work for the abolition of slavery and to aid free Black people.
The Oneida Institute, near Utica, briefly the center of American abolitionism, accepted both Black and white male enrollees on an equal basis, as did for women the Young Ladies' Domestic Seminary in nearby Clinton.
However, when a Black male faculty member, William G. Allen, married a white student, they had to flee the country for England, never to return.
Systematic slavery began in 1626, when eleven captive Africans arrived on a Dutch West India Company ship in the New Amsterdam harbor.
[7][4] For more than two decades after the first shipment, the Dutch West India Company was dominant in the importation of slaves from the coasts of Africa.
Early instances included suits filed for lost wages and damages when a slave's pig was injured by a white man's dog.
Enslaved Africans performed a wide variety of skilled and unskilled jobs, mostly in the burgeoning port city and surrounding agricultural areas.
This law, one of the first of its kind in Colonial America, was in part a reaction to the murder of William Hallet III and his family in Newtown (Queens).
[12] An act of the New York General Assembly, passed in 1730, the last of a series of New York slave codes, provided that: Forasmuch as the number of slaves in the cities of New York and Albany, as also within the several counties, towns and manors within this colony, doth daily increase, and that they have oftentimes been guilty of confederating together in running away, and of other ill and dangerous practices, be it therefore unlawful for above three slaves to meet together at any time, nor at any other place, than when it shall happen they meet in some servile employment for their masters' or mistresses' profit, and by their masters' or mistresses' consent, upon penalty of being whipped upon the naked back, at the discretion of any one justice of the peace, not exceeding forty lashes for each offense.
[16] In 1753, the Assembly provided there should be paid "for every negro, mulatto or other slave, of four years old and upwards, imported directly from Africa, five ounces of Sevil[le] Pillar or Mexico plate [silver], or forty shillings in bills of credit made current in this colony.
[9] The fugitives included Deborah Squash and her husband Harvey, slaves of George Washington, who escaped from his plantation in Virginia and reached freedom in New York.
In 1783, black men made up one-quarter of the rebel militia in White Plains, who were to march to Yorktown, Virginia, for the last engagements.
[9] By the Treaty of Paris (1783), the United States required that all American property, including slaves, be left in place, but General Guy Carleton followed through on his commitment to the freedmen.
[9][18] With British support, in 1792 a large group of these Black Britons left Nova Scotia to create an independent colony in Sierra Leone.
[20] The New York Manumission Society was founded in 1785, and worked to prohibit the international slave trade and to achieve abolition.
It established the African Free School in New York City, the first formal educational institution for blacks in North America.
These included James McCune Smith, who gained his medical degree with honors at the University of Glasgow after being denied admittance to two New York colleges.
A more limited bill was soon introduced, providing for gradual emancipation, but restricting voting, prohibiting intermarriage and black testimony against whites.
[9] In 1804, Captain William Helm, a Virginian, settled first in Sodus Bay and then in Bath with about 40 slaves, in an unsuccessful attempt to implant the plantation system in New York State.
[23] Starting in the 1830s, and particularly between 1850 and 1860, following passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, professional bounty hunters, vigilance committees, and the Underground Railroad could be found in New York.
Abolitionist leaders such as David Ruggles, black and white, helped fugitive slaves escape to Canada or safer locations.
[27] African Americans' participation as soldiers in defending the state during the War of 1812 added to public support for their full rights to freedom.
[28] In Sketches of America (1818), British author Henry Bradshaw Fearon, who visited the young United States on a fact-finding mission to inform Britons considering emigration, described the situation in New York City as he found it in August 1817: New York is called a "free state:" that it may be so so theoretically, or when compared with its southern neighbors; but if, in England, we saw in the Times newspaper such advertisements as the following [see image to right], we should conclude that freedom from slavery existed only in words.
Slaves were manumitted in this state in 1827 by an amended act of 1811 which required that those of a certaia age should be provided for during life with a home on the estate.
[33] "As late as 1869, a majority of the state's voters cast ballots in favor of retaining property qualifications that kept New York's polls closed to many blacks.
African-American men did not obtain equal voting rights in New York until ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in 1870.
"[25] Beginning March 16, 1827, John Brown Russwurm published Freedom's Journal, written by and directed to African Americans.
[36] The powerful words published spread rapid positive influence to African Americans who could help establish a new community.
[39] In contrast, Brooklyn was "a sanctuary city before its time", with one of the largest and most politically aware Black communities in the United States.
