William Penn and Pennsylvania Quaker slave ownership

 

William Penn adopted, at best, a paternalistic attitude towards black slaves ‘looking upon a slave not as the property of the master but as a member of the family’.

The immediate American association with William Penn and the Americas in many people’s mind is the State of Pennsylvania, but he was also involved in the bloody English annexation and the settlement by Quakers of the New York and New Jersey areas. These lands were already settled by slave-owning Europeans, a system of enforced labour which continued and was expanded during English rule.

As referred to in previous posts Penn was a close friend of the Duke of York (later James II). In 1664, the Duke was given the area of New Amsterdam (renamed New York in his honour) and beyond.

New Amsterdam  (NYC Dept of Records)

Quakers were already established in the colony at Flushing and Oyster Bay. Previously, under the Dutch West India Company, the slaves of New Amsterdam had lived in what was known as ‘half-freedom’, that is to say they had some rights and some, limited, independence. However, once under British rule they became chattel slaves, i.e. perceived as personal property of the slave owners in a way that was different from previous slave-systems. It was slavery used as labour under an emerging and consolidating capitalism. Although it is worth noting that these urban slaves never accepted the complete servitude endured by their rural counterparts. None of this ever seemed to affect Quaker William Penn’s friendship with the Duke. By 1687 Quakers were extremely populous in the slave-based colony of New York. As Governor Dongon reported:

‘Here bee not many of the Church of England, (and) few Roman catholicks, [but] abundance of Quakers – preachers men and women, especially – singing Quakers, ranting Quakers, Sabbartarians, Anti sabbatarians, some Anabaptists, some Independents, some Jews; in short, all sorts of opinions there are some, and the most part none at all.’

The Quakers of Pennsylvania used euphemisms for their slaves referring to them as ‘servants’ and their labour as ‘service’. This makes it difficult to ascertain how many slaves the Penn family owned in Pennsylvania. In 1685, he wrote casually of his ownership of slaves of the use of slave labour for the transportation of goods through the colonies:

“ Let him have one of the blacks of Allen, two of which are as good as bought, such a one as is most used to sea…. “

Slave ownership was written into the first Frame of Government of the Province of Pennsylvania. Penn’s Quaker professions of equality and fair play counted for little or nothing once confronted with a rapidly growing province with an acute shortage of labour to work the lands and carry out the multitude of tasks demanded by rural and urban Quaker society. Wage labour at this time was difficult to obtain in a Pennsylvania where land was cheap and fertile and where credit was readily available. Quaker pragmatism therefore, demanded the labour of slaves.

Quakers dealt directly in trading slaves. James Claypool a Quaker and member of the Free Society of Traders had a joint business with other Quakers to buy slaves from his brother in Barbados. Penn’s agent, Philip Lehnmain, used a ship, The Isabella’, to trade for slaves. In 1683 Penn himself was actively dealing in slaves, buying a number from Captain Nathaniel Allen. Penn was also selling slaves. He sold one who was an excellent fisherman for ‘a full price, for the man will expect it of me‘.

Pennsbury Manor (reconstructed), Falls Township, Pennsylvania

Exactly how many slaves worked at the Pennsbury Mansion and Plantation (left) belonging to William Penn is not clear. They were numerous: two slaves, Yaffe and Chevalier, were mentioned as Penn’s favourite “servants” and a slave named Tish was the personal servant of Penn’s daughter, Letitia. Certainly, by 1687 Penn had decided that his plantation at Pennsbury should use only slave labour with a white overseer. In a letter from England to his agent in Philadelphia on this preference for slave labour over white indentured labour:

“It was better they was blacks for then a man has them while they live.”

Pennsbury was Penn’s country estate and mansion in Pennsylvania. It was referred to as his “palace”. As an aristocrat, Penn obviously thought that a slave plantation was the natural inheritance for his children when wrote of Pennsbury:

“Let my children be husbandmen and housewives. This leads to consider the works of God and nature and diverts the mind from being taken up with the vain arts and inventions of a luxurious world. Of cities and towns of concourse beware. The world is apt to stick close to those who have lived and got wealth there. A country life and estate I like best for my children”.

To a certain degree, Penn recognised that slavery was unjust. At one point, he proposed that slaves in Pennsylvania be freed after a certain period of bondage. He suggested the creation of a township, called Freetown, where freed slaves could live, but the hard-nosed Pennsylvania Assembly [nearly all Quakers] rejected the idea.

Penn’s will of 1701 included this clause:

“…& my blacks (given) their freedom, as under my hand already….“

This is the only one of William Penn’s wills that contains such a clause. Neither his will of 1705 nor his last will of 1712 repeated this, and, while Penn is said to have freed some slaves during his lifetime, other slaves passed to his heirs at his death.

What is known, as stated earlier, is that a “servant”, Virgil, was sold in 1733 to Thomas Penn by Joseph Warder providing evidence that the colonial Penn family never given up the ownership of slaves.

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1765 newspaper advertisement: NY – Philidelphia Stagecoach

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American Colonial History, History of USA, New York, New York History, Pennsylvania Gazette, Pennsylvania History, Philadelphia

This ad is from the August 29, 1765, Pennsylvania Gazette, and describes a New York-to-Philadelphia stagecoach transportation service.

The image comes from the excellent blog on Early American newpapers: Rag Linen. It’s well worth a visit!

Early Quakers in Dutch New Amsterdam (NYC)

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New Netherland, New York, New York City, Quaker, Quaker History, Quaker Persicution, Quaker Sufferings

 

I’ve just come across an interesting account of early Dutch Quaker experiences and harassment by Governor Styvesant and the Reformed Dutch Church authorities in the colony of New Netherlands (present day New York State). It is part of the website for the Flushing Quaker Meeting House, NYC – just click here to find out more.

 

 

William Penn and James, Duke of York

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chattle slavery, Company of Royal Adventurers Trading in Africa, Duke of York, Dutch West India Company, Holy Experiment, New Amsterdam; James II, New York, Royal African Company, Slavery, William Penn (1644-1718)

In many writings on the life of the Quaker William Penn much is made of his close relationship with James, Duke of York (later King James II) and how this relationship was advantageous to Penn being able to establish his ‘Holy Experiment’ of Pennsylvania.

It is therefore pertinent to take a look at Penn’s royal friend to gain an understanding of both William Penn himself and the times through which he lived.

The Duke of York was the main shareholder in and the director of the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading in Africa; established at the time of the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. The shareholders in this Company were a combination of the Stuart Royal family along with a number of wealthy London merchants. The Company established London’s monopoly of the English slave trade. It created slave ports on the West coast of Africa where British-produced goods were exchanged for Africans who were then transported as slaves to colonies in the Caribbean and the Americas.

In 1664, the Duke of York, as Admiral of the Navy, annexed the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (it was then renamed New York in his honour). When the Duke took over New York one of the first actions of the new authority was to grant the colony port privileges and the right to use warehouses to ships engaged in the slave trade (1) ~ i.e. ships owned by the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading in Africa in which the Duke was the largest shareholder.

Previously, under the Dutch West India Company, the African slaves of New Amsterdam had lived in what was known as ‘half-freedom’; that is to say under the Dutch they had some rights and some, limited, independence. However, once under Stuart, British rule they became chattel slaves (i.e perceived as personal property of the slave owners in a way that was different from previous slave-systems. It was slavery used as labour under an emerging and consolidating capitalism). Though it is worth noting that these urban slaves of New York never accepted the complete servitude endured by their rural counterparts.

Royal African Company

In 1672 the Duke of York led the merger of the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading in Africa with the Gambia Merchant’s Company. This new Company, the Royal African Company, established further forts on the west coast of Africa as centres of slavery and for trade in British-manufactured goods. Between 1672 and 1689 the Royal African Company was responsible for the transportation of 90,000-100,000 Africans. Many of the slaves who survived the ‘middle passage’ were destined for the American colonies of New York, the Jerseys , Delaware and Pennsylvania where Penn and other many other Quakers had mercantile, land and financial interests.

Numerous slaves transported by the Royal Africa Company were branded with  the letters ‘DY’, signifying they were property of Penn’s friend the Duke of York, others were branded on their chests with the company’s initials, ‘RAC’.

None of this involvement with profiteering from human trafficking ever seemed to affect Quaker William Penn’s friendship with the Duke. And, 20 years later, Quakers were extremely populous in the slave-based colony of New York. As its Governor Dongon reported:

‘Here bee not many of the Church of England, (and) few Roman catholicks, [but] abundance of Quakers – preachers men and women, especially – singing Quakers, ranting Quakers, Sabbartarians, Anti sabbatarians, some Anabaptists, some Independents, some Jews; in short, all sorts of opinions there are some, and the most part none at all.’

(1) This last point is from Alan Singer’s book, New York and Slavery ~ time to teach the truth

Ideas for teachers (and us all) when dealing with the subject of slavery

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African-American History Pennsylvania, Alan Singer, History of USA, New York and Slavery, Teaching Slavery

Following my earlier review of, ‘New York and Slavery – time to teach the truth‘.  The author, Alan J. Slinger, provides two important lists of ideas for teachers (for all of us?) to bear in mind when dealing with the subjects of Slavery in the Americas and Slavery in New York & the Northern States. Both lists contain important, considered points many of which apply to a study of Pennsylvanian history as much as to that of New York State. By kind permission from the author, I reproduce them below.

Ten Main Ideas About Slavery in the Americas

1. West Africans were experienced agricultural workers whose labour was used to exploit the resources of the American continents. Profits generated by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and trade in slave-produced commodities financed the commercial and industrial revolutions in Europe and the United States. Global inequality today is a direct result of this history.

2. European societies and their American colonies accepted hierarchy, injustice, and exploitation as a normal condition of human life. Colour and religious differences made it easier to enslave Africans. Europeans justified this slavery by denying the humanity of the African. These attitudes were reinforced by nineteenth-century Social Darwinism and are the root of contemporary racist ideas.

3. Africans had slaves and participated in the slave trade. But although slavery existed in many times and cultures throughout human history, slavery in the Americas, including the United States, was a fundamentally different institution. There was no reciprocal obligation by the elite to the enslaved. Enslavement, with denial of humanity, was a permanent hereditary status; there was an impassable racial barrier.

4. Democracy and community among White, male, Christian property holders in the early American republic rested on the exploitation of other groups, especially the exploitation of the African. The founders of the United States were aware of the hypocrisy of owning slaves. Slavery was intentionally not addressed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

5. Africans in the Americas resisted slavery in many different ways. They built families, communities, and religious institutions that asserted their humanity. In the United States, enslaved Africans developed an emancipatory Christianity based on the story of the Exodus and laced it with African symbols. In Haiti and Brazil, there were successful slave rebellions. Historians W.E.B. DuBois and C.L.R. James believe the rebellion in Haiti was the impetus for the final decisions by Great Britain and the United States to support the suppression of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

6. White and African-American abolitionists struggled for decades against slavery. Most White abolitionists based their beliefs on the Protestant religion. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the “Common Sense” of the antislavery crusade because it presented the humanity of the enslave African. The story of the complicity of some New Yorkers with slavery and resistance of others to oppression is not the story of White villany. Many White New Yorkers took strong political stands against what they perceived as a fundamental moral evil.

7. While Christian religious beliefs were used to challenge slavery, they were also used to justify it. Defenders of slavery, particularly in the South, used biblical citations to defend the “peculiar institution.”

8. Slavery was a national, rather than a southern, institution. There was limited slavery in the North until 1840 and prosperity in the North rested on the slave trade and the processing of slave produced raw materials.

9. The Civil War was not fought by the North to free Africans; it was fought to save the Union. It ended legal bondage, but not the racist ideas that supported the system.

10. With over 200,000 African Americans in the Union army and navy, the American Civil War should be seen as part of an African-American liberation struggle.

Ten Main Ideas About Slavery and the North

1. Slavery, until its abolition in New York State in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, even after it was declared illegal in 1808, the financing of slave plantations in the South and in the Caribbean, the shipping of slave-produced products, and the manufacture of goods using the commodities of slavery, were all integral to the prosperity of New Netherland, the British colony of New York, and the New York State.

2. Many New Yorkers implicated in the slave system were politically influential and economically powerful. They shaped the policies of the state and nation. A number of prominent individuals and founders of the state and national governments were participants in and profited from the salve system.

3. In order to preserve the Union and protect their own profits from products produced by enslaved workers, many New York and national leaders who opposed the expansion of slavery into the West were willing to compromise with Southern slave owners and to support the slave system in the South even after the outbreak of the Civil War.

4. Despite the Declaration of Independence’s promise of human equality, there were ideological inconsistencies in the early nation. Many leading New Yorkers, including some White opponents of slavery, believed in the racial inferiority of African Americans, opposed full political rights for African Americans, and endorsed their re-colonalisation in Africa. Some of the most radical abolitionists in New York who accepted Black equality were unwilling to accept equal rights for women. Significantly, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony were major allies in the struggles for rights for both African Americans and women.

5. The slave system and racism contributed to an endemic of fear of uprisings by New York’s African population during the colonial era. Rumors of potential rebellion led to “witch hunts”. Africans who fought for their freedom in the colonial era were summarily tried, tortured, and executed. Suspects were tortured untill they confessed to “crimes” and implicated others. Minor infractions of the slave code were severely punished. On a number of occasions violent mobs attacked African Americans and White abolitionists.

6. At the same time, New York State offered a safe haven to many Africans who escaped from slavery and a place where free African Americans could organise politically with White allies to end the slave system and achieve full citizenship. New Yorkers, both black and White, were active participants and national leaders in political campaigns to end slavery and to resist the oppression of Black people.

7. African Americans in New York resisted slavery through active and passive means. They resisted slavery through running away, organising their own cultural and religious institutions, building families and communities, openly of surreptitiously disobeying slaveowners, and through open revolt.

8. Resistance to slavery was often violent. Enslaved Africans in New York openly rebelled against slavery during the colonial era. Many supported the British against forces fighting for American independence in an effort to achieve their own emancipation. Leading New York abolitionists, both Black and White, violated the law and physically prevented the recapture of runaway slaves. Some New York abolitionists were supporters of John Brown’s military campaigns against the slave system and were implicated in his armed assault on a federal weapon’s arsenal in 1859.

9. The histories of many parts of New York were influenced by slavery, the slave trade, and the struggles to end them. Because of the pattern of settlement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, slavery in the New York State was concentrated on Long Island, in New York City and its surroundings, and in the Hudson River Valley up through Albany. In the nineteenth century, the port of New York functioned as a major international centre for the financing of the slave trade and the trade in goods produced by slave labour.

10. New York was a major centre for abolitionist and anti-abolitionist movements and publications. Due to their proximity to Canada, to work opportunities, and to religious and other social movements, regions of New York State and cities located along the route of the Erie Canal played major roles on the underground railroad and in antislavery agitation during the nineteenth century. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the availability of land in the North Country made it a safe haven for free Blacks and for escaped slaves who sought a place where they could build families and communities.

Alan Singer has a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Rutgers University. In Hofstra University’s School of Education and Allied Human Services, he is a professor of secondary education and the director of social studies education.

Teaching about Salvery ~ a review of Alan Singer’s ‘New York and Slavery’

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African-American History New York, Alan Singer, American Colonial History, Black History New York, Excelsior Editions, History of USA, New York and Slavery, New York and Slavery time to teach the truth, Quaker History, State University of New York Press, Teaching Black History, trans-Atlantic slave trade

Front cover

I recently had the pleasure of reading Alan J. Singer‘s, ‘New York and Slavery – time to teach the truth’ (published, 2008).

This 166 page book deals with ways of engaging young people in the exploration, discussion and thinking of aspects of the history and present day consequences of North American slavery. Although pitched at a New York audience it has relevance for all historians and teachers of history who agree that it is “time to tell the truth” and involve their pupils and students in constructivly challenging preconceptions and stereotypes that exist in the classroom and wider society around slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Contents Page

As one who has spent a lot of time, energy and research into the history of slavery and the results of slave labour from a Bristol/UK perspective, it is interesting that Singer (and his educational colleagues in NYC) are experiencing the same frustrations as many of us on this side of the Atlantic. His discussions about the lack of understanding by educational, institutional and public authorities regarding how ‘facts’ and ‘information’ can be interpreted differently by people of different backgrounds, ethnicity or colour is a mirror image of what is happening in the UK. The struggles in NYC to get flexibility in the History curriculum could have been written by a UK-based history teacher who really wants to engage his/her pupils  in the vitality of social history in the classroom.

I found the information on the early history of New York/New Amsterdam illuminating. This section provides an understanding of the ‘half slavery’ Africans endured under the Dutch and the complete, ‘chattle slavery’ introduced by the Penn family fiend, the Duke of York.

Alan Singer has a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Rutgers University. In Hofstra University’s School of Education and Allied Human Services, he is a professor of secondary education and the director of social studies education.