Contrary to popular perception, slavery persisted in the North well into
the nineteenth century. This was especially the case in New Jersey, the
last northern state to pass an abolition statute, in 1804. Because of
the nature of the law, which freed children born to enslaved mothers
only after they had served their mother's master for more than two
decades, slavery continued in New Jersey through the Civil War. Passage
of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 finally destroyed its last vestiges.
The Ragged Road to Abolition chronicles the experiences of slaves and
free blacks, as well as abolitionists and slaveholders, during slavery's
slow northern death. Abolition in New Jersey during the American
Revolution was a contested battle, in which constant economic
devastation and fears of freed blacks overrunning the state government
limited their ability to gain freedom. New Jersey's gradual abolition
law kept at least a quarter of the state's black population in some
degree of bondage until the 1830s. The sustained presence of slavery
limited African American community formation and forced Jersey blacks to
structure their households around multiple gradations of freedom while
allowing New Jersey slaveholders to participate in the interstate slave
trade until the 1850s. Slavery's persistence dulled white understanding
of the meaning of black freedom and helped whites to associate "black"
with "slave," enabling the further marginalization of New Jersey's
growing free black population.
By demonstrating how deeply slavery influenced the political, economic,
and social life of blacks and whites in New Jersey, this illuminating
study shatters the perceived easy dichotomies between North and South or
free states and slave states at the onset of the Civil War.
