religious activities. For example, John Woolman officiated the marriage of William Boen, a former Mount Holly slave, even as, the “way not opening in Friends’ minds, he was not received” by the meeting as a member. Instead, he remained affiliated with them until 1814, when the meeting finally granted him full membership.24
Like Boen, other Jersey blacks attended Quaker meetings in Burlington, Gloucester, and Salem in what became a way for Friends to collectively repay a debt owed for their participation in slavery. This Quaker “guilt,” usually manifested as paternalistic assistance, helped the Society become the largest (and only) lobbying group for black freedom in the state. The Salem Monthly Meeting felt so passionately about these meetings that they rearranged their regular worship schedule to allow blacks to use their meeting house at more convenient times. These meetings provided West Jersey blacks with an organized structure to create networks of both white and black allies, which they used to develop business ties, free family members, and gain educational opportunities. In sum, many ex-slaves saw these meetings as an opportunity to develop the bonds needed to survive in a state still ensnared in slavery.25
Calls for abolition routinely came directly from Quaker meetings as well as from those activists who had worked with Governor Livingston. In 1786, for instance, the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, which included New Jersey, wrote to the state legislature to “restore this injured people to their natural right to freedom” and quickly enact gradual abolition. In 1788 they again called for abolition and stronger restrictions on the slave trade. Likewise, in 1792, the Meeting of Sufferings sent a delegation to Trenton to discuss ways to enact gradual abolition. That same year, Jersey Quakers joined those from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland to petition for the immediate abolition of slavery, citing the “oppressed condition of the African race” and their position as “solicitors on their behalf” following the “precept and injunction of Christ” to mitigate slaves’ pain and suffering.26 New Jersey Quakers again spoke in 1799 through the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to the nation at large for the “spirit of meekness and wisdom in promoting” abolition.27
Quakers, especially abolitionist James Pemberton, also allied with Governor Livingston and worked to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. They sponsored a law that prohibited both the importation of slaves from Africa and of slaves from other states who entered the country after 1776, which tied the measure directly to the Revolution. However, as opposed to New Englanders who organized against the widely unpopular and sinful slave trade at the expense of local slaves, Livingston and his coalition fused the abolition of the slave trade with abolition at home. Despite the renewed push for gradual abolition in New Jersey, Livingston eventually abandoned the combined plan, believing that trying for both ran “the risk of obtaining nothing,” especially since gradual abolition had failed the previous year. Therefore, he claimed it was “then prudence not to insist upon it but to get what we can and which obtained paves the way for procuring the rest.”28
The attack on the slave trade tied Jersey Quakers to a much larger national coalition against the “barbarous custom” of slave trading. By the 1760s, both northerners and southerners, including New Jerseyans, had limited access to the slave trade by levying prohibitive duties. Although the Crown repudiated most of these duties, the Second Continental Congress enacted a ban on slave trading that lasted until 1783. Afterward, activists in individual states who opposed the trade worked to ban it and by 1790, as one newspaper article claimed, “the citizens of the United States [were] so generally united” in the belief of the trade’s barbarity that it made it an easy abolitionist target.29 Even though Georgia imported slaves until 1798 and South Carolina reopened the slave trade in 1803, most Americans opposed it. Closing the slave trade simultaneously helped fulfill the idea of revolutionary freedom, increased the value of those currently enslaved, and, as many thought, limited the potential for future slave rebellions. In New Jersey, Livingston’s coalition found common ground with slaveholders and banned the slave trade in 1786. However, the victory did little to weaken slavery’s hold in New Jersey because few slaves had been imported since the 1760s.30
Although unable to abolish slavery in New Jersey, Quakers and their allies petitioned the legislature relentlessly to make voluntary manumission of slaves easier, arguing that the colonial law requiring slaveholders to post manumission bonds dissuaded owners otherwise inclined to free their chattel. The same 1786 law that banned the slave trade allowed masters to manumit slaves age twenty-one to thirty-five without bond after an examination by two overseers of the poor and two justices of the peace who would certify the slave would not become destitute. It also required owners to support former slaves if they ever required poor relief. Following this law, Robert Armstrong of New Brunswick brought his slave Tony for examination before two overseers and two justices of the peace in 1790. However, when Tony fell into poverty six years later, Armstrong claimed he had released any and all claims on Tony “to all intents and purposes as if he has never been my slave,” to escape paying for his care. Of course, the law prevented this very action and Armstrong had to support his indigent former slave.31
The continued efforts of abolitionists in the 1790s to expand the availability of manumission helped many slaves negotiate freedom for themselves. In 1792, for instance, Burlington and Hunterdon County abolitionists petitioned the legislature to expand the manumission criteria by permitting masters to manumit slaves under twenty-one if the ex-slave was then indentured until twenty-eight. This proposal mimicked Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition law and encouraged slaveholders to sign away their future rights to children after a period of service. Although nothing came of the petition, it shows their desire to emulate a graduated system of abolition, one that extracted labor in exchange for freedom. This became the blueprint for the abolition plan enacted in 1804. In a larger sense though, the expansion of manumission was critical to hundreds of West Jersey blacks who used this viable legal avenue of freedom to achieve what they had strived for since the Revolution.32
The 1786 law also levied fines against masters who abused their slaves, further supporting Quaker amelioration efforts. This requirement led Henry Wansey, an English traveler who toured New Jersey in 1794, to observe that “many regulations have been made to moderate [slavery’s] severity.”33 The law responded to a number of abuse cases, including one involving Monmouth County slaveholder Arthur Barcalow, who whipped his slave Betty for failing to follow his direction to return home. Despite acceding to her master’s will, Barcalow continued to beat Betty. A neighbor testified that Betty “was dead . . . [her] arm bloody and appeared to have been cut with a whip.” The coroner concluded that Betty died of blunt force trauma caused by the broom stick Barcalow wielded, which led a local jury to convict Barcalow of murder. Abolitionists made sure that all mistreatment, not just Barcalow’s extreme example, would be punished under the law. This section of the 1786 law, while spearheaded by abolitionists, helped slaveholders defend slavery as they claimed that their slaves lived as a protected class of servants. Slavery therefore acted as a positive benevolent institution, worthy of support.34
A regulation that mandated masters teach their young slaves to read, also part of the 1786 law, further bolstered a paternalistic defense of slavery and reflected the abolitionist desire to educate young slaves with skills to prepare them for possible future freedom. No record of any slaveholder being fined under this law remains but evidence suggests that some slaveholders, like Aaron Malick, did send their slaves to school, which likely helped some achieve freedom in the future. However, slaveholders before the 1820s viewed reading “as a tool that was entirely compatible with the institution of slavery.” Writing, in contrast, represented an “intrinsically dangerous” skill that slaveholders worked diligently to limit. As abolitionists never forced the issue of writing, the promotion of slave reading seemingly fits into the larger campaign to quell Quaker guilt.35
Quaker efforts to ease manumission requirements and temper slave treatment accentuated the differences between East and West Jersey. Slavery in West Jersey, due to Quaker influence, declined quickly due to manumissions. In Burlington County, for example, the county clerk recorded seventy-five manumissions between 1786 and 1800, which helped shrink the county’s
