Slavery in New York

Slavery in the United States was generally known to be a southern institution and while it was eliminated from the northern states before the south and without a bloody civil war, it was still an extensive operation across the northern states and even New York. There was even a slave market right off of Wall Street. Slavery in New York was abolished in 1827 but before then and during the days of Colonial New York slavery was common place in New York, across the colony and all throughout the original thirteen colonies.

Slavery as a legal institution began in New York in 1725 in New Amsterdam, and wouldnt end till 1829 after the process of abolition starting in 1799 when it was made illegal in the state. There are ofcourse records of slavery well before 1725, as early as 1525 in New York.

Slavery in New York and the north in general was different than the very well known practices of Southern plantations. In New York most slaves worked in domestic positions and labor positions on the docks. There were many slaves in the north but they were spread about under many masters rather than bunched up on plantations like in the south. Though the work and environment was different slaves still ran away attempting to gain their freedom.

After taking a look at a wide verity of runaway ads from the mid 1700s it is abundantly clear that the ads themselves were only as useful as the advertiser made them out to be. Some ads provided great detail in the appearance and possessions of the runaway while other neglected such details or focused on other less important details. Some consistencies were the amount of time the run away has been at large, the clothes they had on, the reward as well as where to return the runaway. It would seem to indicate that slave owners valued their property and the financial cost rather than the human aspects of their runaway slaves, whom I suppose was seen as property at the time and was treated as such.

Below is a map showing runaways from New York during 1756-1757. All of these were advertised in the New York Gazette, which was the regional news paper at the time. It makes sense that several of the adversisers were from Northeast New Jersey, as many of them likley did buisness in or around New York City. Clearly from the map its clear that most runaways were from the Tri-State area of the NYC, New Jersey, and Connecticut which makes sense as with a more dense population there would of course be more slaves.