New Jersey: The last slave state
The devil is in the details, and the real Jersey Devil is the art of the loophole
Today, I’m going to say bad things about New Jersey, or rather, the state government of New Jersey. Buckle in, it’s a wild ride. Today, I’m going to talk about slavery, fine print, and loopholes. The lesson is a simple one: Reform done right requires close attention to the details.
New Jersey’s gradual emancipation law wasn’t as effective as Pennsylvania’s, to the point that New Jersey ended up becoming one of the last three states with slavery in the United States.
The beginning of the end of slavery
Slavery has been around for a long time in a variety of different forms. The two main sources of slaves in the United States were the international slave trade and the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem. Anyone born to a slave mother was born as a slave.
Slavery by birth began in Virginia in 1662, and the first example of lifetime enslavement was imposed as a criminal punishment in Virginia in 1640. The intercontinental slave trade had been in continuous operation since at least the days of ancient Rome.1
The international slave trade faced some restrictions in the United States beginning with the…