when he applied for a federal pension, managed to secure numerous letters of support from prominent Somerset whites who believed, as supporter William Gaston claimed, that Sutphen was “highly meritorious of a pension” because he “ably and nobly performed” his duties as a soldier. The federal government, however, rejected his claim, explaining in an 1833 letter “that being a slave originally,” Sutphen “was not bound to serve in the militia and the circumstances of each tour of actual service (were) not . . . stated as was required.” In a continuing debate on the status of his claim, the Pension Office in 1834 and 1835 maintained that his service against the Indians remained “very doubtful” and that he most likely had not served a full six months as required by the pension law. In an unlikely show of support to a black veteran, the Frelinghuysen family, a powerful Jersey political dynasty, intervened and petitioned the state legislature to support Sutphen. In response, the state granted Sutphen a pension for the last five years of his life.101
Though rare, other New Jersey blacks managed to negotiate for freedom, pensions, and land in exchange for their participation in the Patriot cause. John Ceasar from Sussex County, for example, a private in the Fourth New Jersey, joined the army in December 1776 and served in multiple units before his discharge in May 1783. In a 1780 muster roll, his unit recorded that Ceasar had received a western land grant that he augmented in 1800 with another. Similarly, Oliver Cromwell of Burlington County joined the Second New Jersey Regiment in 1777 at age twenty-six. He served at the Battle of Short Hills among other engagements and was discharged in June 1783. For at least part of his service, Cromwell belonged to the same regiment as another young African American, Thomas Case, who served for nine months in Phillips’ Company, Second New Jersey Regiment, from 1778 to 1779. For his service, Cromwell received a land grant in 1791 and successfully applied for a pension of ninety-six dollars a year in 1820 at age sixty-seven. In his application, Cromwell claimed that after his military service, he became a “common laborer . . . but from age” he could no longer “get a livelihood.” He listed approximately ten dollars in property and reported that he needed to care for his twenty-five-year-old infirm daughter and two young sons, ages twelve and ten. Cromwell continued to collect that pension until he died in 1852, just two months short of his hundredth birthday.102
Unlike the cases of Sutphen and Cromwell, most records list only the most basic information about blacks who fought with the patriots. Negro Stephen, for example, joined the Second Regiment of Continental Dragoons in December 1781 as a private, while Negro Pomp, a teamster in charge of a four-horse wagon, served in Trenton in 1780. Negro Jack, Negro Cezar, Negro Dick, and Negro Will all did the same, but no additional information survives to tell more than their names and occupations within the army. With limited records available, it remains incredibly difficult to reconstruct the lives of these enslaved and formerly enslaved African Americans in Continental service. However, as New Jersey, like most other states, never actively recruited black soldiers or promised freedom in exchange for military service, it stands likely that most of these enslaved men returned, like Samuel Sutphen, to their masters as slaves.103
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In addition to fears of slave revolt and economic devastation, anxiety over a sizeable loyalist population led the state to reinforce slavery by confiscating and selling loyalist property. The revolutionary government in Trenton demanded that residents take loyalty oaths to affirm their standing within the new American body politic. Those who refused became targets of both ridicule and violence, leading thousands of New Jerseyans to flee to British lines and thousands more to remain neutral or harbor secret loyalist sentiments. The anxiety created by the constant British attacks increased the intensity of anger and animosity toward Jersey loyalists and precipitated laws that punished the disloyal by confiscating their property to help finance the war effort. Loyalists Daniel and Henry Van Mater, for example, claimed in 1779 that Jersey loyalists “have been since obligated to quit their homes and property in a very precipitate manner,” which had left many in severe financial straits after the state confiscated them. Guy Carleton similarly remarked that New Jersey patriots increasingly excluded the loyalists “with circumstances of additional rage,” making their loyalty even more problematic for them.104 Patriots regularly confiscated and sold loyalist estates, which included land, houses, horses, kitchenware, bedding, and, most important, slaves. The state-sponsored sales of slaves symbolized the state’s reaffirmation that African Americans were equated with property, not freedom.105
Though the sale of loyalist-owned slaves reinforced the equation of slaves as property, it had more to do with the hatred of loyalists and the need to profit from them rather than a concerted proslavery effort. New Jersey’s first state legislature, after it had deposed Royal Governor William Franklin, drafted new laws that imposed rigid guidelines on loyalty, which warned of the presence of persons “so wicked as to devise the destruction of good government or to aid or assist the enemies of the state.” It declared those who remained loyal to the Crown guilty of high treason.106 In 1778, the legislature enacted even more stringent regulations requiring the confiscation of property owned by those convicted of treason. The Commissioners of Forfeited Estates in each of New Jersey’s thirteen counties began to depose witnesses and establish cases that called into question the loyalty of hundreds of New Jerseyans. The commissioners brought treason cases before sympathetic patriot juries that routinely found the accused guilty, which triggered the seizure and sale of the traitor’s property.107
New Jersey patriots ecstatically supported the confiscation of loyalist estates and encouraged the state to enact harsher anti-Tory laws. In 1781, ninety-eight patriots in Morris County petitioned for a law to allow the confiscation of property belonging to “a number of evil minded villains and disaffected persons” who entered New Jersey “in a secret and clandestine manner for the purpose of plundering and taking away the . . . property of the (state’s) good inhabitants.” These patriots demanded compensation from them for their economic losses.108 Similarly, Monmouth County residents applauded confiscation in 1779 and asked the legislature to use the money raised to reimburse them for damages caused by British raids, including those from Colonel Tye’s unit.109
Patriotic fervor quickly turned to outrage and demands for greater state oversight when residents learned that the commissioners of the forfeited estates had abused their powers. Monmouth County patriots complained of the dishonorable conduct of the commissioners in manipulating sales so that friends, allies, and relatives could purchase estates at cut-rate prices. In Monmouth, as in other locales, the commissioners frequently published notices only one day before the sale, ignored higher bids in favor of their lower bidding friends, accepted bids after the auction had closed, sold estates as one cohesive package instead of in individual pieces, and prevented bidders from inspecting the property before the auction as required by law. These failures forced the legislature to enact even stricter sale regulations and required the legislative and executive branches to take an active and integrated role in the sales of loyalist property, including slaves.110
The state’s role in slave sales had been ongoing since the early 1700s because British and later American admiralty courts routinely approved the sale of “Prize Negroes” captured from enemy ships. The eighteenth century especially saw hundreds of these captured black mariners sold into slavery since the colonies waged war almost continually since the 1730s in conflicts such as the War of Jenkins’ Ear, King George’s War, and the Seven Years’ War. The war against Spain in the late 1730s and early 1740s brought hundreds of “dark-skinned Spanish sailors” into American ports, especially in New York and New Jersey, which served as colonial privateering centers. Mid-Atlantic admiralty courts frequently determined that “the mere darkness of the Spaniards’ skin” enabled them to be sold as slaves even if they had been previously free. One such former Spanish sailor, George, a twenty-six-year-old slave from Burlington County, likely had been captured by privateers since records describe him in 1749 as a “Spanish mulatto fellow” who spoke “indifferent English” and had once “been a privateering.”111
During the American Revolution, American admiralty courts continued the colonial practice of condemning captured black British
