Walkabout: Brooklyn’s Freedom, Part 3

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4 of this story.

By the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, New York’s system of slavery had been attacked and lay faintly beating, like a patient’s diseased heart. But that didn’t mean the patient was going to just up and die.

Dabbling in the slave trade had been a successful profession in the early 1700’s, and having slaves, a practice among New York’s Dutch farmers and wealthy merchants, had been a labor-saving and overall boon for the owners.

Not so much for the mostly African-born slaves who had been brought to our shores either directly from Africa, or from the Dutch or British Caribbean, where the harsh conditions had been beaten into them. New York was the largest slave state in the colonies, north of Maryland.

With a quarter of the people coming into New York’s harbors as slaves, the system seemed to be in no danger of changing. Who knows what would have happened in New York, except for that pesky “Liberty or Death” sentiment?

The war changed everything. The British, hoping to undermine colonial society, offered freedom for any African slave, if he fought for the King. After a time, the Continental Army saw the wisdom of making the same offer: freedom for fighting for the new nation of America.

In the chaos of the war, thousands of New York’s slaves escaped or went over to the British side, and at the end of the war, left New York for British Canada, or settled in freedmen’s towns elsewhere. In spite of winning a war for a nation’s freedom, the institution of slavery would continue.

However, it didn’t go down well, with many. In 1785, the question of slavery was brought up in the New York State legislature. The majority of legislators advocated to end slavery, but the fighting started over how to do it, and when. Some, including Aaron Burr, wanted slavery to be abolished immediately, with no conditions or caveats.

Others wanted to ease out of it slowly, so it wouldn’t hurt as much. In the end, the moderates won, and gradual manumission laws were passed, but were so burdened with riders and conditions that they had no teeth or direction at all.

The slave trade in New York was outlawed in 1788, but there were loopholes. In 1799, a bill was passed called the “Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery”, which said that slaveholders could hold in slavery their youngest slaves, so they could work at their highest capacity, before becoming free, thereby allowing their owners the maximum use of their investments, and thus help mitigate their losses.

The new law freed the children of slave mothers, born after 1799, but only after the men were older than 28, and the women older than 25. Anyone who had been a slave before 1799 was a slave for life, but their status was changed to “indentured servant” to avoid the actual non-doing of the deed of truly freeing the slaves.

It was also legal to take advantage of the many loopholes, and sell your slaves down south before the legal slave trade ended. Since the law did not interfere with indentures, it was possible for a master to indenture for life, or in one legal case, for 99 years, in effect condemning their servants to slavery past even the eventual 1827 date for the full banning of slavery.

Unscrupulous people in New York were also able to take freedmen and women back into bondage, by declaring them indentures for debts or fraudulent loans, and selling them down South, or declaring them runaways. A Quaker group, the New York Manumission Society, was influential in stopping many of those sales, when they heard of them. At last, in 1827, slavery was officially outlawed in all of its forms, in the state of New York.

So what was going on in Brooklyn? It was suggested in many of the convoluted attempts at easing out of slavery, that slave owners handle their manumission “by hand”; freeing one’s slaves themselves, and many did so, including Brooklyn’s largest slaveholding families. Various branches of the Remsen, Bergen, Vanderbilt, Cowenhoven, Van Brunt, Woodhull, Hicks’, Duffield and Polhemus families, to name just some, freed their slaves in the early years of the 19th century.

Many of the newly freedmen and women continued to work for the same families, others left and went elsewhere, including the more urban areas of Brooklyn. In Flatlands, by 1820, there were 107 slaves out of 512 residents.

That year, Brooklyn had more free blacks living here than slaves. The census shows 657 Free Negroes and 190 slaves. These free people made their living as was best allowed them, as domestics, servants and laborers, wheelwrights, carpenters, blacksmiths, seamstresses and washer women.

There was also a small class of professionals; doctors, teachers, ministers, and successful small businessmen. And there were a lot of people with few legal prospects, who were often castigated in the press as the “outcasts and indigent sons of Africa”, who would make their way as best they could, working for day wages, when possible, and often sold oysters, fish and other items streetside. Some took part in illegal activities, and some joined the ranks of the beggars and indolent of many nations, an all too common sight in any city in the world.

The years between official freedom in New York State in 1827, and the Civil War saw the African American in New York trying to make his or her way in a general society that didn’t really want them there, didn’t know how to treat them, didn’t really want to make full citizens of them, and certainly wasn’t interested in equality or equal opportunity.

While New York was now a free state, its African-American residents were still in danger from fugitive slave catchers and the antipathy of many of its citizens. Blacks were not allowed to vote, or hold elective office. They could not marry whites, and could not testify against a white man in court. Basically, they could be “free”, but not enjoy any of the freedoms that are attached to their new-found status, and were in a legislative and societal limbo.

In 1838, James Weeks, a black stevedore on Brooklyn’s docks, bought some land from another African-American, Henry F. Thompkins. The plots were in Brooklyn’s 9th Ward, just east of the growing town of Bedford. Mr. Weeks built himself a house on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Schenectady, and invited other black investors and settlers to join him.

By 1855, a thriving African-American town had emerged, with over 800 people. They established churches: Bethel Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Berean Missionary Baptist Church. Before the end of the century, would also have a school, many small businesses, a newspaper, “The Freedman’s Torchlight”, a cemetery, and an old age home and colored orphanage.

The residents of Weeksville were successful doctors, craftsmen, journalists, teachers, small business owners, as well as ordinary working people. They were a success story of black accomplishment in a hostile and dangerous environment. Just how dangerous that environment really was will be discussed next time. Once again, war was on the horizon. This time, it was between the North and the South.

Photo: One of the Weeksville Houses, on the old Hunterfly Road, now a part of Crown Heights North.