Description:
This collection documents the struggle to end slavery in New York in the early nineteenth century.In the 1790s about two-thirds of blacks in the state of New York were slaves. The coming decades brought a hard-fought, gradual struggle to end slavery in the state. In 1799 New York became the next-to-last Northern state to pass an emancipation law. That act declared that all children born into slavery there after July 4, 1799 would be free when they turned 25 (for women) or 28 (for men). Those born before 1799 were redefined as indentured servants for life, to work without pay but not subject to being sold. In 1817 New York finally agreed to free enslaved people born prior to 1799, but it delayed their emancipation for ten years. Slavery in New York State did not come to a complete legal end until July 4, 1827.
The collection comprises:
Sale and ultimate manumission of Jack, a slave in New York in 1816
Cornelius Hyatt and Richard Leverich. Manuscript document selling and then freeing a slave… Read More