several houses by area loyalists “deprived us of the reputation the general’s intentions merited and gave too good foundation to the rebels to represent us as inimical to the country.”27 Benedict Arnold likewise argued in 1780 that “plundering the distressed inhabitants of New Jersey” would cause them to support the patriots.28 British actions resulted in just that, as many New Jerseyans allied with Continental forces. By early 1777, Whipple reported that the “ravages committed by the enemy have had a most excellent effect on the people of Jersey” as “the militia now turn out with great spirit and harass the ravagers of their country in every quarter.”29 At the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, Hunterdon County militia officer Joseph Clark reiterated his men’s support for the patriots when he wrote that the battle had “roused the militia . . . they turned out with such a spirit . . . never did the Jerseys appear more universally unanimous to oppose the enemy.”30
The economic devastation caused by the Revolution became further exacerbated by the work of the slaves themselves since they capitalized on the war’s destructive and disruptive power and struck out for freedom. For example, slaveholders in the most heavily slave populated county, Bergen, saw the loss of hundreds of slaves who joined British forces and no longer supported the county’s agricultural base. One such Bergen resident, Richard Varick, bemoaned in 1778 that “in the beginning of the war, my father had two middle-aged negroes and wenches—he has lost the wench . . . one negro died and the last wench and one negro left with the enemy.”31 Varick’s two escaped slaves joined hundreds more who heard the British promise of freedom. The fear that blacks could run away, disrupt New Jersey’s slave system, and potentially serve in the king’s army exacerbated the anxiety caused by the war and further damaged the economic viability of hundreds of slaveholders. The slaves themselves then, even as they sought freedom, inadvertently convinced many whites of the dangers of wartime abolition.32
British enthusiasm for offering slaves freedom and thereby economically hurting patriot masters began in 1775 when Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, promised freedom to any slave who would fight against the Americans. News of Dunmore’s promise spread far from Virginia and soon slaves in New Jersey understood the British as a beacon of freedom. British commanders across the colonies announced similar declarations. On June 7, 1779, David Jones, the British general in charge of New York, declared that “all Negroes that fly from the Enemy’s Country are Free . . . no person whatever can claim a right to them.” Jones’s declaration exceeded the limited scope of Dunmore’s because he offered freedom to all slaves who escaped to Tory lines, not just males that fought.33
New Jersey slaves quickly took advantage of the guarantee of freedom by this powerful group of whites and ran away in large numbers. Lutheran minister Henry Muhlenberg saw the support the British had among Jersey slaves, writing that they wished “the British army might win, for then all Negro slaves will gain their freedom.” This belief, according to Muhlenberg, was “universal among the Negroes in America.”34 For the most part, he was right. Thousands of blacks ran toward British lines, covered by the disorder of war, especially in the Mid-Atlantic. The fugitive slave population of Philadelphia doubled and nearly quadrupled in New York.35 Runaway advertisements provide a rough estimate of the general characteristics and quantity of slaves who fled New Jersey. From 1776 to 1783, New York and New Jersey newspapers ran 314 runaway advertisements. As historian Billy Smith found studying Philadelphia papers, the Revolution produced a significant uptick in runaways. Smith measured an annual average of 43 runaway advertisements per year from 1750 to 1775. During and immediately after the Revolution, that number more than doubled to 102 annually.36 In New Jersey, these runaways remained, as would be expected, overwhelmingly male (79.6 percent), between sixteen and twenty-five (51.6 percent), and therefore easily integrated into the British military. Of course, not all slaves who ran away became soldiers. Phillis Sparrow, a twenty-eight year-old woman who belonged to Charles Suydam of New Brunswick, left her master in 1776 and fled to a free life in British-occupied New York. Similarly, in 1777, Richard Stevens’s slave from Hunterdon County left his master and fled to Staten Island after coaxing by Jinlay Drake, who specifically decried military service.37
The constant military maneuvering in the state transformed New Jersey into a battleground not only over food but between slavery and freedom as British lines within the state and the freedom they offered ebbed and flowed throughout the war. Fleeing slavery was easy in New Jersey, as few slaves needed to travel far from their masters’ homes to find a British unit. As in other occupied areas, slaves could easily acquire protection from British troops and access freedom by “simply walking out of their master’s homes.”38 Some did not have to walk far at all since passing British troops lured many slaves away with promises of freedom. A twenty-eight-year-old male slave owned by Joseph Holmes of Upper Freehold did just that when he fled to British troops that had marched onto his master’s land.39 Similarly, Ennis Graham claimed that a large body of Hessian soldiers carried off his slave Oliver on their way to the Battle of Trenton in December 1776, while Thomas Edgar of Woodbridge saw his thirty-five-year-old male slave flee to nearby British forces during the same campaign.40
Slaves ran away from their masters with the understanding that a chance at freedom with the British outweighed both the dangers of simply absconding and the realities of an unfree life in Patriot New Jersey. For example, in 1778 twenty-two-year-old Boston ran away after his owner, Ann Griffith, told him that he would be sent to serve with the Continental Army. In making his escape, perhaps Boston believed that military service with the British, who guaranteed freedom, was a better alternative than service with the Americans, who did not. Griffith, however, soon found Boston on the British schooner Revenge, commanded by Captain William Cook, who had just recently surrendered to American forces on the Delaware River. Griffith applied for Boston to be returned immediately. Cook, unlike other British mariners who interpreted Dunmore’s Proclamation to free slaves who boarded British ships, met with a local man named Martin Delany and planned to sell Boston for up to 125 pounds. One witness overheard Cook plotting to sell Boston “to the first West Indian vessel that he met” and reap a huge profit. Griffith’s case became even further complicated as an American Admiralty Court condemned Cook’s ship and cargo, including Boston, as confiscated property liable for sale. In the end, Griffith regained custody of Boston, but many more who lost slaves to the British did not. In total, more than 150 Jersey masters filed claims with the state for slaves lost to British forces.41
The animosity caused by British foraging raids increased as New York became the epicenter of free black life in the United States, growing due to the surging numbers of Jersey runaways. A resident of New Barbadoes in Bergen County complained in May 1780 that “twenty-nine negroes of both sexes have deserted within two weeks past.”42 This represented a steady increase in absconding slaves and necessitated the expanded use of the militia to apprehend them. For example, in 1777, Major Samuel Hayes of the Essex County militia reported that he had seized two absconding slaves in Newark, bound for New York. That same year, Monmouth County militiamen captured slaves Joe and Scipio under suspicion that they intended to join the British.43 In 1782, one slave arrested for attempted escape to New York was “tied . . . to the tail of a horse . . . his feet were fastened in the stocks and at night his hands also.”44 However, increased militia action barely scratched the surface of the runaway threat and did not effectively deter migration to New York.45
The foraging raids and the rising number of absconding slaves focused attention on the British and the perceived threat that a radical change in the state’s racial structure could bring.46 Thousands of New Jerseyans filed damage claims with the legislature in 1781 and 1782, showing how the British army, as Abraham Clark wrote, “one of which the most savage known among civilized nations” had “spread desolation through” New Jersey and precipitated an economic and social crisis.47 However, Continental forces had also helped spur this crisis. Continental General Lord Sterling, for instance, ordered his quartermasters in December 1778 to seize American property and pay the “usual price” for it even though he found the whole process “extremely disagreeable . . . but necessary.”48
