African Slaves on Long Island, New York

In 1626, a ship carrying 11 male slaves sailed into the harbor at New Amsterdam. They were immediately put to work by the Dutch West India Company building roads, cutting timber, clearing land and helping construct a major fort at the southern tip of Manhattan. For the next 38 years – until the British took over New Netherlands and renamed it New York – the Dutch slowly increased the numbers of slaves in the colony, including the settlements on western Long Island.

Some slaves were imported directly from Africa, but the Dutch officials preferred to buy slaves who had been “seasoned” by a few years of living in the West Indies. By then they had gotten used to working as slaves, had picked up some of the new language, and in many cases had contracted and survived a bout with the killer disease smallpox, thus becoming immunized.

The Slave Insurrection of New York City

Image: John Hughson’s Tavern
The tavern was on the waterfront in 1741 and its doors were open to blacks and poor whites, and it had a bad reputation among the respectable citizens of New York City.

Thirteen black men burned to death at the stake. Seventeen black men hanged. Two white men and two white women also hanged. All thirty-four were executed in New York City between May 11 and August 29, 1741, as part of the episode early New Yorkers called the “Great Negro Plot” or the “New York Conspiracy.”
~Thomas J. Davis, A Rumor of Revolt

First Free Black Settlement in North America

Image: Artist’s rendering of Fort Mose

Exploiting its proximity to plantations in the British colonies in North America and the West Indies, King Charles II of Spain issued the Edict of 1693, which stated that any male slave on an English plantation who escaped to Spanish Florida would be granted freedom provided he joined the Militia and became a Catholic. This edict became one of the New World’s earliest emancipation proclamations. Spanish rules about slavery were very different from those of the English. Spanish slaves could own property, could buy their freedom, could sue their owners and separating families was prohibited.

Word of the Spanish policy of giving sanctuary to escaped slaves spread rapidly among the black population in the Carolinas and Georgia, and the number of escapees steadily increased. By 1738, more than 100 Africans had reached St. Augustine, prompting the Spanish to establish Fort Mose (pronounced Moh-Say) and a nearby community named Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, two miles north of St. Augustine, Florida. The settlement included a four-sided fort, houses and fields.

The Year: 1755

Between 1735 and 1750, Georgia was unique among Britain’s American colonies, because it was the only one to attempt to prohibit black slavery as a matter of public policy. The decision to ban slavery was made by the founders of Georgia, the Trustees.

Slavery Banned in Georgia
General James Oglethorpe, the earl of Egmont, and the other Trustees were not opposed to the enslavement of Africans as a matter of principle. They banned slavery in Georgia because it was inconsistent with their social and economic intentions. Given the Spanish presence in Florida, slavery also seemed certain to threaten the military security of the colony. Spain offered freedom in exchange for military service, so any slaves brought to Georgia could be expected to help the Spanish in their efforts to destroy the still-fragile English colony.

History of Slavery in South Carolina

Image: Plantation Dance in South Carolina
This well-known watercolor by an unidentified artist depicts people presumed to be plantation slaves dancing and playing musical instruments. It gives a rare view of African American life in South Carolina during the colonial period. The women are wearing head wraps and gowns with fitted bodices and long full skirts. Some of the men are wearing earrings. Although its setting is uncertain, materials in the files of Colonial Williamsburg suggest a plantation between Charleston and Orangeburg, South Carolina.

Conditions in the South were favorable for slavery. Large stretches of fertile land, a warm climate that the Negroes tolerated much better than the whites, and unhealthy regions where white men did not care to work – all these drew slavery to America. Established first in the Spanish possessions of the West Indies, it spread as soon as the mainland was settled along the mainland, from Jamestown northward and southward.

History of Slavery in North Carolina

Image: Illustration shows white children playing with a black child, and “represents the old Negro servants of the planter’s family among his children. The children of the [white] family grow up among the Negro domestic servants, and often learn to regard them with as much affection as they show their own parents.” Source: The Illustrated London News

Many of the first slaves in North Carolina were brought to the colony from the West Indies or other surrounding colonies, but a significant number were brought from Africa. Most of the English colonists arrived as indentrued servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status.