Conclusion

Our system of slavery was strictly domestic, the negro almost invariably living under the same roof with the master, or, if his habitation was detached, as certainly sometimes happened, it was still near at hand, leaving both races as parts of a common family.… Among the Dutch, in particular, the treatment of the negro was of the kindest character, a trusty field-slave often having quite as much to say on the subject of the tillage and the crops, as the man who owned both the land he worked, and himself.

—James Fenimore Cooper, Satanstoe or The Littlepage Manuscripts

James Fenimore Cooper’s words in his 1845 novel Satanstoe echo a sentiment that has persisted in Dutch American communities for generations: “Among the Dutch, in particular, the treatment of the negro was of the kindest character.” In those communities, he wrote, enslaved people were living in the homes of their enslavers “as parts of a common family.” When they worked in the field, they did so at their “master’s side.”¹ Such descriptions of slavery have been quite common in Dutch New York. Yet, they completely erase the systems of control, surveillance, and segregation necessary to sustain a system of human bondage in these communities. Frequent representations of slavery as a benign system in Dutch New York and the misguided notion that enslaved and free people “shared” the home, workplace, church, and public spaces proved especially powerful in sustaining this myth.

This book has demonstrated that although enslaved New Yorkers often lived in the same houses as the people who claimed to own them, they were certainly not inhabiting the same parts of the home or treated as members of the family, as Cooper suggested. Through spatial analysis, this book has shown that even when enslaved people inhabited or frequented the same places as their enslavers, their experiences within these spaces were inherently different. Enslaved men, women, and children did not live, work, or worship alongside their enslavers. Instead, they were often excluded from worshipping in Dutch Reformed churches, and when they did have access they were commonly relegated to back benches where they could barely hear or see the minister. When enslaved New Yorkers in these communities lived under the same roof as their enslavers, they would be restricted to the back parts of the home. They were forced to sleep in these houses’ drafty, small garret spaces or cold, dark cellars. Moreover, they could not walk the streets freely; in fact, they often needed a pass to navigate public spaces where various systems of surveillance were employed to control their activities.

Such systems of control did not yet exist during the earliest years of Dutch colonization, but they became more common in the region as more free New Yorkers began to rely on the labor of enslaved people. During the Dutch colonial period, enslaved men and women in New Amsterdam had been able to use their access to some of these spaces to improve their circumstances. Many of them participated in the Dutch Reformed Church and used the colony’s courts to protect their property and wages and to obtain freedom. Over the course of the long eighteenth century, Dutch Americans began to assert their dominance over these spaces and restricted enslaved men and women from accessing them or heavily restricted them within these spaces, a practice that proved integral to sustaining a system of human bondage.

Similarly important, however, is the fact that Cooper’s description omitted any references to enslaved New Yorkers’ daily acts of resistance. Some enslaved New Yorkers resisted with outright rebellion or by running away, but most resistance took place in often unnoticeable acts. When running errands for their enslavers, for instance, they would often extend the time they had to visit friends or family. At night, when they were not allowed to walk the streets, they used alleyways and backyards to avoid being caught by watchmen. Moreover, they would often practice their religious beliefs in their sleeping quarters, hidden from their enslavers. The chapters in this book have demonstrated that through these actions, enslaved New Yorkers created alternative ways of knowing and navigating the spaces they inhabited and frequented. Regardless of their enslavers’ efforts, their movements and activities could not be controlled.

Finally, Cooper suggested that “New York never had slaves on the system of the southern planters, or in gangs of hundreds, to labour in the fields under overseers and who lived apart in cabins of their own.” He certainly was not the only one to assert that slavery in the South differed significantly from slavery in New York. Indeed, enslaved New Yorkers did not work on large plantations, and most slaveholders held fewer than five people in bondage. That does not mean, however, that slavery in New York was somehow more humane. There too, men, women, and children had been turned into commodities, or as Cooper detailed, Dutch American farmers owned both the land and the enslaved workers who cultivated it. Whether it was in New York or Virginia, enslaved men, women, and children endured physical and emotional abuse every single day. And, as this book has shown, when it concerned enslavers’ efforts to control spaces, the system of slavery in Dutch New York much resembled that of southern communities.

Even though Cooper wrote these words in a novel, albeit semiautobiographical, and years after slavery had been abolished in the state, they matter. Frequent repetition of slavery in New York as somehow a more benign system has helped this narrative dominate popular memory.² A similar imbalance exists in the archives, where the stories of enslaved men and women are largely told by the people who claimed to own them. That does not mean that the archives do not hold records produced by enslaved New Yorkers, but they are few when compared with the overwhelming amounts of documents produced by their enslavers. Consequently, historians who rely on the archives often struggle to piece together a more complex recounting of the history of slavery. Any study of slavery that relies predominantly on the documents produced by the enslavers runs the risk of perpetuating their power and control over the narrative and its memory. Through research of the spaces of enslavement, this book has presented a more tactile history of slavery that helps show why the narrative of slavery in New York as described by Cooper and others is unequivocally false.