New from the University of Pennsylvania Press:
The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865, by
James J. Gigantino II (University of Arkansas). A description from the Press:
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.
A blurb:
"A fresh, well-documented tale that forces us to reconsider much of
what we thought we knew about the social, political, and productive life
of a young nation."—Susan O'Donovan
More information is available
here.
