The Expansion of Slavery in Dutch New York

White New Yorkers of all backgrounds relied on the labor of enslaved people, but slavery appeared especially widespread in some of New York’s predominantly Dutch communities. Although freed Africans were among the founders of some Kings County communities—today the New York City borough of Brooklyn—by the early eighteenth century almost all of the county’s Black residents were enslaved. This enslaved population made up almost 15 percent of the region’s total population in 1698. The institution of slavery continued to grow in Kings County over the course of the eighteenth century, and by 1790, about a third of Kings County’s population lived in bondage (see Figure 3.1).¹¹ Similarly, the enslaved population in Ulster County increased significantly in the eighteenth century. Wiltwijck court records mention enslaved people as early as the 1660s, but they appear to have been a relatively small number.¹² By 1723, however, enslaved people made up 19 percent of Ulster County’s total population, and they continued to be a substantial part of the county’s population until the abolition of slavery in 1827.¹³ In the area of Albany County, the population included several enslaved men, women, and children during the Dutch colonial period, and their numbers increased substantially during the long eighteenth century. While Albany County’s enslaved population reached just over 5 percent of the county’s total population in 1790, the county had the largest enslaved population of all of New York’s counties at the time (see Figure 3.2).¹⁴

Home to the region’s first enslaved and later free Black community, New York City continued to have a significant Black population in the eighteenth century. There, free and enslaved Black residents reached almost 20 percent of the total population in 1737. While many Dutch Americans were among the city’s enslavers, free New Yorkers of all ethnicities and religious convictions held people in bondage.¹⁵ Unlike any other part of the region, New York City also had a substantial free Black population by the late eighteenth century, when about a third of its Black residents were free.

Most often enslavers in these communities held fewer than five people in bondage, but there were certainly slaveholders who enslaved more people at any given moment. Ulster County’s 1790 census records demonstrate that in some towns the number of slaveholders who enslaved five or more people was quite substantial. In Hurley, 40 percent of the town’s enslavers held five or more people in bondage, and in Kingston this number reached 48 percent of its slaveholders.¹⁶ Albany County included some of New York’s largest slaveholding estates, including Stephen Van Rensselaer, who reported fifteen slaves; Volkert Dow (or Douw), who counted fourteen enslaved people as part of his household; and Francis Nichols of Watervliet, who held eighteen people in bondage.¹⁷

Enslaved men, women, and children in these communities were forced to complete a wide variety of tasks. By the mid-eighteenth century, most Dutch American farmers grew crops—such as flax, wheat, and corn—for regional and international trade.¹⁸ Enslaved laborers toiled on these farms, but they also assisted artisans in the workplace, ran errands for their enslavers, worked in domestics, and labored on the docks, especially in the vibrant merchant communities of Brooklyn, New York City, and Albany.¹⁹

The importance of enslaved laborers did not go unnoticed to the region’s visitors. Alexander Coventry, for instance, noted in his late eighteenth-century journal that among the Dutch farmers in the Coxsackie region enslaved people “did all the work on the farm, and in the house.”²⁰ When William Strickland traveled through the region, he suggested that “the oldest slave manages the lands, directs the cultivation of it and without consulting him the master can do nothing.”²¹ Such descriptions attest to white New Yorkers’ growing reliance on enslaved people’s labor.

In an effort to keep the free Black population small, eighteenth-century legislation implemented manumission regulations that discouraged them. As detailed by the 1712 “Act for preventing Suppressing and punishing the Conspiracy and Insurrection of Negroes and other Slaves,” enslavers were now required to pay a two-hundred-pound manumission fee, and they had to pay these freedmen and women a yearly fee of twenty pounds, supposedly to ensure that they would not fall into poverty.²² Consequently, New York’s free African American population remained small throughout the eighteenth century. Even when slavery and abolition became hotly debated topics in the late eighteenth century, 82 percent of New York’s African American population remained enslaved. Most counties counted only a few free Black families, and only New York City had a considerable free Black population.²³

Even though New York’s legislators passed the “Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” in 1799, it would take decades for slavery to come to a complete end.²⁴ In most of Kings County, for instance, the enslaved population continued to make up about 20 percent of the population in 1810.²⁵ The 1830 Federal Census provides further evidence that even after the state’s abolition of slavery it had not yet come to its complete demise. According to this census, seventy-six men, women, and children still lived in bondage, two of whom were in Albany County, seventeen in New York County, and twenty-six in Montgomery County. Even in 1840, New Yorkers reported four enslaved people to the census, three of whom lived in Brooklyn.

Over the course of the long eighteenth century, slavery had become an integral part of New York society, and it continued to be well into the nineteenth century. Free New Yorkers from all social and ethnic ranks benefited from the labor of enslaved people, including many Dutch descendants. Consequently, efforts to sustain the system permeated every part of society. Whether it was in Albany, Kingston, or New York City, enslavers always sought ways to control the men, women, and children they held in bondage.

Geographies of Control

When Benjamin Franklin left Philip Schuyler’s Albany mansion in May of 1776, Mrs. Schuyler insisted that he let Lewis, one of the men enslaved by the Schuylers, drive him to New York City in a post-chaise. Once he arrived safely at his destination, Franklin wrote to Schuyler that he was glad he took the offer because “part of the Road being very stoney and much gullied, where I should probably have overset and broke my own Bones; all the Skill and Dexterity of Lewis being no more than sufficient.”²⁶ Evidently, Schuyler, a prominent Dutch descendant and major general in the Continental Army, regularly relied on Lewis to transport Schuyler family members and their guests. Although Lewis would travel many miles independently, out of sight of his enslaver, Schuyler trusted that he would return without any major divergences. Schuyler assumed that the system that he and fellow white New Yorkers had put in place helped control and contain the movements and activities of enslaved people in the public space.

As the number of enslaved people increased and more white New Yorkers, many of whom were of Dutch descent, relied on the labor of enslaved people, their interests in developing ways that would help control and regulate the movements and activities of these enslaved women, men, and children in public spaces expanded. Over time, white New Yorkers established a system of legal restrictions, surveillance, patrols, and public punishments that helped turn public spaces into geographies of control. Increasingly, Black New Yorkers’ activities in these white spaces were deemed illegitimate unless they could prove otherwise. Thus, Black New Yorkers, whether free or enslaved, navigated controlled and white-dominated public spaces in which their activities were always considered potentially criminal.²⁷

By the latter part of the seventeenth century, New York authorities began to pass legal restrictions on the activities of free and enslaved Black New Yorkers. Whereas some enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam had been able to access the colony’s courts to protect property, secure wages, or obtain freedom for themselves or their families, such opportunities became rare by the late seventeenth century. The Duke’s laws, named after the Duke of York James Stuart and implemented by the English after they took over the region, formally codified slavery in the colony’s laws, and the New York assembly and local courts soon began to pass legislation in an effort to control and contain the region’s enslaved population.²⁸ In doing so, legislation became an effective tool of enslavement.

New York authorities passed several acts that prohibited enslaved men and women from congregating in public spaces and forbade free New Yorkers from trading with enslaved laborers without consent of their enslavers. A 1682 ordinance prohibited enslaved New Yorkers from leaving their enslaver’s property without his or her consent, and in 1684 the general assembly resolved that they should not be allowed to engage in trade without permission.²⁹ In November of 1702, the colonial council passed its first comprehensive act “for Regulateing of Slaves,” which, among others, regulated trade with enslaved people, permitted enslavers to punish enslaved people, and prohibited enslaved people to meet in groups larger than three.³⁰ Over the course of the eighteenth century, the colonial assembly and local councils continued to curtail enslaved people’s movements and activities in the public space through implementation of strict regulations. The 1706 “Act to Incourage the Baptizing of Negro, Indian and Mulatto Slaves” stipulated that enslaved New Yorkers could not serve as witness in cases concerning free people.³¹ A 1709 law prohibited the sale of strong liquor to enslaved men and women.³² After the 1712 New York City slave revolt in which enslaved New Yorkers killed several enslavers, “An Act for preventing Suppressing and punishing the Conspiracy and Insurrection of Negroes and other Slaves” prohibited enslaved people to meet in the colony’s public spaces with more than three people at the same time.³³

Local courts passed similar slave codes in an effort to contain and control enslaved people. As early as 1707, New York City’s council determined that the city’s enslaved men and women would not be allowed to meet with more than four fellow enslaved men and women at a time.³⁴ Bellmen of the city were to check the city’s streets “every hour in the night” and apprehend “all disturbers of the peace.”³⁵ After the city’s 1712 revolt, the city’s Common Council prohibited “Negro and Indian slaves above the Age of fourteen years from going in the Streets of this City after Night without a Lanthorn and A lighted Candle.”³⁶ In an effort to limit theft and illicit trade, the city’s council also passed laws that prohibited enslaved New Yorkers from trading goods in the city’s markets. In Albany and Ulster counties, legislators passed similar legislation to help regulate and control their enslaved populations.³⁷

Enslavers’ efforts to curtail enslaved people’s mobility and enforce control over them in public spaces extended beyond legislation. White New Yorkers used the built environment to assert their supposed undisputable dominance over the public space.³⁸ Through design and planning, as well as social and cultural practices, white New Yorkers signified that these public spaces belonged to them. In the region’s Dutch communities, the central location of Dutch Reformed churches signaled the community’s dominant religion. Dutch American design of homes and streetscapes further reinforced that they defined these communities’ social and cultural foundations. Through practice and legislation, they also determined the behavioral norms in these public spaces. Thus, within these communities, enslaved men and women were always deemed outsiders even if these were the communities in which they were born and raised.

Through enforcement of the various laws and prohibitions in these public spaces, enslavers sought to intimidate enslaved people. As Marisa Fuentes points out in the case of Barbados, architectural structures such as the gaol, whipping post, and execution gallows served as important symbols of power and control.³⁹ Barry Higman similarly argues that it was not unusual for Caribbean towns to contain “visible symbols of public terror in the shape of workhouses, jails, cages, stocks, and treadmills.”⁴⁰ New York authorities placed such structures in similarly strategic public spaces. In the city of Albany, for instance, authorities positioned the gallows and prison on the hill where now the state capitol is located, an area visible from the town. The permanent and public presence of these symbols of discipline and punishment became constant reminders of these communities’ power structures.⁴¹

Enslaved people often endured public punishments, intended to instill fear into enslaved men and women, at these locations. When in 1676 Baltus confessed to having violently attacked several people in the streets of Kingston, he received an especially horrendous sentence: “His right hand shall be cut off, his legs and arms shall be broken and directly thereafter he shall be hung to the gallows as an example for others.”⁴² Similarly, after Tham of Hurley was found guilty of killing an enslaved woman of the same town in 1696, he was “sentenced to be hanged till dead, to have his throat cut and then be hanged in a chain for an example to others.”⁴³ The mangled bodies of these men and women were placed in public spaces to convey a clear message to others. Enslaving communities across the Americas used such public displays of discipline and punishment to force control over its enslaved population, and New York was no different.

Dutch American communities in the region also employed architectural designs that enhanced control of public spaces. As explained in Oscar Newman’s theory of “defensible space,” certain building styles can discourage prohibited behavior in the public spaces. Newman argues that such architectural design can create “defensible space” through, among others, “real and symbolic barriers” and architecture that facilitates surveillance.⁴⁴ Although he developed his theory in the context of 1970s urban planning, his concept of defensible space proves useful when examining slavery and public spaces. For example, Newman contends that windows that oversee entrances and common spaces help keep areas safe, because neighbors can then recognize any unusual behavior or potential intruders.⁴⁵ Such building practices became integral to Dutch American towns like Albany. In fact, Newman uses a traditional Dutch home that resembles the architecture of eighteenth-century Albany houses as an example of defensible space (see Figure 3.3). Stoops at the entrances of these homes signified the transition between the private and public space. In many of these towns, Dutch Americans built their houses close to one another with windows that provided a good overview of the streets, which reinforced what Newman identified as “territorial claim by providing unmistakable surveillance from within the dwelling.”⁴⁶ Within these communities where most people knew their neighbors and their daily routines, it would have been difficult to traverse the streets unnoticed. Many of these Dutch American towns, often inadvertently, developed a system of surveillance similar to Foucault’s theory of the panopticon in which the surveilled often internalize such surveillance, leading them to always feel as if they are watched, which influences behavior.⁴⁷

In addition to such informal systems to control Black people in public spaces, slaveholders also organized patrols or vigilante services. Especially at night and in rural areas such forms of surveillance proved crucial to limiting the activities of enslaved people in the public space. To this end, enslavers in Ulster County organized the Society for Apprehending Slaves in 1796. Based in Shawangunk, the society accepted members for an annual fee and each member would be required to “enter in a book to be kept by the Secretary the name or names of such slave or slaves as he intends to put in charge of the society.” These members could call on the society’s riders to apprehend any of the registered men or women who might try to escape their bondage.⁴⁸ Thus, these enslavers created a community-based system to keep enslaved people from fleeing successfully.

Communities implemented curfews and pass systems to further their control over enslaved people. Church bells often served as a reminder that a night curfew was about to start, as was the case in Albany, where at 8 o’clock the Dutch Reformed Church bell alerted residents of the town’s curfew.⁴⁹ In an effort to enforce curfews and generally avoid criminal activities at night, towns often required enslaved people to carry lanterns, and they employed watchmen to patrol the streets.⁵⁰

Enslaved women and men had to obtain permission from their enslavers to navigate public spaces.⁵¹ Sylvia Dubois, an enslaved woman in New Jersey’s Dutch communities, gave an unusual insight into the various tactics communities employed to control the enslaved population:

You see that in those days the negroes were all slaves, and they were sent nowhere, nor allowed to go anywhere without a pass; and when anyone met a negro who was not with his master, he had a right to demand of him whose negro he was; and if the negro did not show his pass, or did not give good evidence whose he was, he was arrested at once and kept until his master came for him, paid whatever charges were made, and took him away. You see, in those days anybody had authority to arrest vagrant negroes. They got paid for arresting them and charges for their keeping till their master redeemed them.⁵²

Similar practices occurred throughout New York. In fact, New York legislation encouraged free individuals to detain Black men and women if their activities in the public space appeared illegitimate. In 1713, New York City’s council passed “A Law for Regulating Negro & Indian Slaves in the Night Time,” which, among others, detailed that “it Shall and may be lawfull for any of her Majesties Subjects within the said City to Apprehend such slave or slaves not having such Lathorn [lantern] and Candle.”⁵³ And in 1726, the city’s council stipulated that free, white people who found an enslaved person breaking the laws should be rewarded by this person’s enslaver.⁵⁴ Importantly, enslaved New Yorkers’ mere presence in public spaces without permission from their enslavers could be considered criminal behavior.

In some cases, simply being accompanied by a white person gave legitimacy to Black activities in the public space, as is evident from a 1730 oyster-racking ordinance. Claiming that enslaved people had racked so many oysters that none were left for white New Yorkers, the law stipulated that when Black men were racking for oysters, they had to be accompanied by at least one white man. Thus, the presence of white people made this a visibly permitted activity for Black New Yorkers in white space.⁵⁵

The region’s enslavers used “runaway slave advertisements” to help identify the men, women, and children who attempted to escape their bondage. Thus, these advertisements proved useful tools for surveillance. As Shane White points out, print was used to enforce “the slave system.”⁵⁶ In these articles, the people who fled their enslavers were described in great detail, thus exposing their most intimate characteristics.⁵⁷ For instance, an advertisement that searched for Jacob, who fled George Wray of Albany, described him with great specificity:

about 23 Years old, 5 Feet 6 Inches high without Shoes, has a Scar on the right Side of his Forehead, another on his left Temple, both just in the Edge of his Hair, two large Pock Marks on the upper Part of his left Cheek, high Cheek Bones, had a Hair Mole under his Chin, but has lately cut the Hair off it; the Calves of his Legs remarkably high, stoops forward in walking, speaks English very well, some French, and a little Spanish, of an insinuating Address, very apt to feign plausible Stories, has a stammering in his Speech when in Liquor, and may call himself free.⁵⁸

Other advertisements provided similar intimate details of the men and women they were searching. Jack, who escaped John Raff of Albany, had an “outward Bend in his right Foot, which obliges him to brace the hind Part of his Shoe round his Ancle to keep it up, both his Great Toes are nearly frozen off.”⁵⁹ When Philip ran away the ad that looked for him mentioned that he had “a scar on his left foot just above the large toe.”⁶⁰ These advertisements show that enslavers studied their enslaved laborers’ bodies and behaviors, and they shared these details with the rest of newspaper-reading New York in the hopes that such information would help them retrieve the people who had fled. For the enslaved men and women described in these advertisements, such detail limited their chances of successfully escaping their enslavers and put them at risk of random investigation of even the most intimate parts of their bodies.

Even after enslaved men and women obtained their freedom, their former enslavers still might try to regulate their movements. Hillitje DeWitt’s early nineteenth-century correspondence illustrates such efforts most vividly when she directed family members in New York City to discourage Nan and Joe, who had recently obtained their freedom from the DeWitt family, from visiting Rochester because “there is a number of Black ones belonging to this family that are Slaves & likely to Remain so, & for Nan & Maybe Joe too, to come parading all the way up here, free people, it would make these here discontented & Sulky.”⁶¹ Evidently, Hillitje worried Nan and Joe might cause an uprising among the people she still held in bondage, and so she tried to control the movements of this couple even after they had become free.

New York’s enslaving class created a system that helped control, regulate, and surveil the region’s enslaved population and to some extent its free Black population in the public space. Although these efforts extended beyond Dutch American communities, Dutch American enslavers participated in or encouraged the implementation and enforcement of such regulations, symbols, and structures on local and regional levels. Whether it concerned public punishments as was the case with the execution of Tham of Hurley, publications of detailed runaway slave advertisements like the one that searched for Jacob from Albany, or organized slave patrols similar to Ulster County’s Society for Apprehending Slaves, Dutch Americans often led the creation of geographies of control.

Geographies of Resistance

When in November of 1793 a fire that started at the barn of Peter Gansevoort destroyed twenty-six Albany homes, Albany authorities arrested two enslaved girls—Dean and Bet—and an enslaved man named Pomp.⁶² While in custody, Bet confessed that Pomp had asked her and Dean to help him ignite the fire.⁶³ Although we will never know to what extent her admission of guilt was coerced, her testimony does reveal how she and other enslaved Albanians navigated the town’s streets in ways that avoided systems of surveillance.⁶⁴ Bet’s confession detailed such alternative ways of navigating Albany’s streets when she described that they climbed a wall and traveled through the city via alleyways and backyards. They also timed their movements through the city according to the watchmen’s schedule.⁶⁵ Moreover, she explained that most of their communication with each other and between Pompey and the two men who apparently had promised to pay him if he set Gansevoort’s house on fire had occurred in alleyways and during Sunday’s church services. Her vivid description shows that enslaved New Yorkers often created geographies of resistance within the communities and areas in which they lived.

That enslaved men and women navigated these communities differently should have come as no surprise to the authorities. For instance, a 1740 New York City law that prohibited enslaved men and women to trade corn, peaches, and other fruit in the city detailed that enslaved New Yorkers had been selling produce in the public streets as well as in “houses, out houses & yards.”⁶⁶ Moreover, enslaved men and women often lived and worked in cellars and behind their enslavers’ living spaces, which would have given them a different perspective of the towns and villages they inhabited. Yet, as Bernard Herman noted in the case of Charleston, white people often believed that they controlled their environment. They assumed that enslaved people traversed the city in the same ways that they did.⁶⁷ Enslaved men and women used their enslavers’ false confidence to navigate their communities unnoticed. Especially at night, free New Yorkers had very little control or oversight over the backyards and alleyways through which enslaved people moved. In rural areas, enslaved men and women would have traveled on back roads or other alternative routes to hide any unpermitted travel and activities. Thus, enslaved New Yorkers regularly circumvented the mechanism implemented to ensure white control of public spaces.

Enslaved men like Lewis, who had transported Benjamin Franklin from Albany to New York City, often labored in the region’s public spaces, and they frequently used these assignments to expand such unsupervised moments. No one would have noticed if Lewis extended his ride back to Schuyler Mansion briefly so that he could include a quick visit with family or friends who lived along the route or if he used this opportunity to circulate messages or even packages.⁶⁸ Men like him gained extensive knowledge of the physical and social landscape, which helped them navigate the public space even when they did not have permission to do so. In fact, William Strickland suggested in his journal that enslaved men in Dutch American communities often had a better understanding of their environment than the people who enslaved them when he wrote, “I have several times called at Dutch houses to make enquiries, when the owner, unable, though otherwise willing, to give the information, has called for Con, or Funk his oldest Slave, to answer my questions, or point out the road to the place I was going not perhaps distant more than a very few miles.”⁶⁹ With knowledge of their environments, these enslaved people were able to create geographies of resistance in which they resisted their enslavers’ control over their movements and activities in these public spaces. Although enslavers were acutely aware of the fact that these enslaved men could use such brief moments in the public space to escape their oversight, they needed their enslaved laborers to work in public spaces, and they believed that the systems of control and surveillance they had put in place would at least curtail any prohibited behavior.

Free New Yorkers tried to limit the activities and mobility of their enslaved laborers through legislation. Yet, as the many court cases reveal, legal restrictions could not stop enslaved people’s activities in the public space. Even though their activities were firmly regulated, restrictions were not always strictly enforced, and thus enslaved men and women often met in public spaces even when such activities were prohibited.⁷⁰ Enslaved New Yorkers gathered in groups, traveled the streets after curfew, purchased alcohol, and traded goods. In 1710, for instance, New York City’s courts accused Catherine Elbertse of entertaining enslaved men “without the privity or knowledge of their Masters or Owners.”⁷¹ While in New York City, William Livingston complained that one of the men he enslaved would “be abroad at nights after the family was a bed, & we would never find by what avenue he went or return’d.”⁷² Similarly, Ulster County petitioners explained that because enslaved people often broke the law “in the silent hour of the night” there were few people who witnessed their crimes.⁷³

Various sources discuss the predominantly male get-togethers of enslaved New Yorkers in public spaces. In 1690s New York City, for instance, a group of enslaved people were accused of making “a great noise and disturbance” in the evening.⁷⁴ In 1710, charges against Elizabeth Green, who entertained enslaved New Yorkers, claimed these enslaved people from the South Ward “feast and revell in the night time.”⁷⁵ Sometimes, enslaved people used abandoned buildings for late-night gatherings. In the 1730s, for instance, enslaved New Yorkers regularly met at “the little wooden house belonging to Widow Wilkinson upon Golden Hill in the East Ward” of New York City.⁷⁶ Although white New Yorkers prohibited such get-togethers and contained general mobility of enslaved men and women in the public space, they could not stop these activities from occurring.

Whether it was in urban or rural New York, court records reveal that plenty of free New Yorkers engaged enslaved men and women in prohibited activities. In 1697, for example, Anthony Bosselyn and John Wels, both of Marbletown, were indicted for selling alcohol to enslaved men “without the consent of their masters.”⁷⁷ Mattys Slecht of Kingston pleaded guilty to selling “several pots of beer” to enslaved men in 1716.⁷⁸ The frequency with which local and regional authorities reenacted legislation that prohibited trade with enslaved people and selling alcohol to them suggests that many ignored such bans. Indeed, one act noted that “many Mischiefs have been Occasioned by the too great Liberty allowed to Negro and other Slaves.”⁷⁹ The continued occurrences of illicit trade by enslaved men and women brought a group of Ulster residents to petition the State Assembly for “a more effective Law to prevent trafficking with Slaves.” In part, their 1792 petition complained about “the scandalous custom of many of the citizens of this state of trading with the said slaves.”⁸⁰ Thus, often with the collaboration of the free New Yorkers, enslaved New Yorkers defied their enslavers and the social and spatial restrictions imposed on them.⁸¹

Such activities were undoubtedly difficult to stop because they offered enslaved laborers rare opportunities to congregate while temporarily escaping the “master class,” and the free New Yorkers who traded with them or sold them alcohol benefited financially from these exchanges.⁸² Clearly, truancy was common among enslaved New Yorkers, but some of them used their knowledge of the physical and sociopolitical landscape to create a more permanent escape from bondage. For much of the eighteenth century, men and women in Albany County, for example, took advantage of the area’s close proximity to the Iroquois Nations and New France colony to flee. When in 1786, three enslaved men ran away, their enslavers feared that they “will doubtless make their way to the Indians, as they are very good Hunters, they will doubtless become as one of them.”⁸³ Such efforts to escape caused authorities to pass a law as early as 1705 in an effort to “prevent the running away of Negro Slaves out of the City and County of Albany to the French at Canada.”⁸⁴

During times of war, and especially during the American Revolution, enslaved New Yorkers took advantage of the political turmoil. Graham Russell Hodges shows in his analysis of New York and New Jersey runaway slave advertisements that the number of men and women who tried to free themselves increased significantly during the American Revolution.⁸⁵ When Vermont abolished slavery in 1777 and Massachusetts followed in 1784, these states became destinations for some enslaved New Yorkers. For example, when an enslaved mother named Bett ran away with her children, they were thought to have fled to the neighboring free state of Massachusetts, which was especially close to Albany.⁸⁶ These enslaved men and women understood the sociopolitical landscape and physical geography, and they often knew how to navigate these to escape their enslavement.

Enslaved men and women also defied their enslavers’ efforts to control their movement through the use of travel passes. At times, enslaved men and women took advantage of the travel passes they received, or they forged such papers to escape their bondage. When the enslaved woman Deb got “permission to seek a master,” a common practice in Dutch American communities where enslaved people were tasked with finding a new enslaver, she used this opportunity to run away.⁸⁷ Similarly, according to an 1805 runaway slave advertisement, Jack, who had fled his enslaver in Albany, would “probably shew a paper permitting him to look for a master.”⁸⁸ An 1815 runaway slave advertisement in the Albany Register searched for Caesar, “a black man, having got leave of absence from his master to join in the amusements of Pingster Holidays, with a promise that he would come back on the Tuesday following, but he has not yet returned.”⁸⁹ These enslaved men and women used the pass system their enslavers had put in place to control them to legitimize their movements in the public space.

Although New York’s enslavers developed various tactics to control the movements and activities of the people they enslaved in the public space, these geographies of control were never foolproof. Indeed, enslaved New Yorkers found multiple ways to expand their mobility. They created geographies of resistance, alternative ways of knowing and navigating public spaces that helped them escape their enslavers’ control, even if only temporarily.

Pinkster

On June 29, 1803, the Daily Advertiser of Albany published a description of its Pinkster—the Dutch version of Pentecost or Whitsuntide—festival. It detailed a parade through the streets of Albany that was led by a Black man known as King Charles. According to the article, he was “master of ceremonies, whose whole authority is absolute and whose will is law during the whole of the Pinkster holidays.”⁹⁰ The days-long celebration that followed included games, music, dancing, and drinking. Similar African American Pinkster celebrations took place in Dutch American communities from Schenectady to Brooklyn. While it appears peculiar that an African king had complete authority and enslaved men, women, and children were allowed to congregate, drink, and dance in the public space, a close examination reveals that Pinkster resembled celebrations led by enslaved people across the Americas.

The earliest descriptions of Pinkster as a distinct African American celebration date back to the late eighteenth century, when slavery in New York reached its peak. During the celebration, enslaved men, women, and children in the region’s Dutch communities would gather in large groups, play music, dance, and drink alcohol, apparently even excessively if they liked to do so. But why did slaveholders allow enslaved men, women, and children to take time off and celebrate in the public space for several days, doing those things that they were restricted from doing the rest of the year? Some scholars have suggested that allowing brief periods of freedom during Pinkster was a way for enslavers to avoid resistance. Historian Shane White, for example, argues that Pinkster served as “a safety valve allowing a cathartic release from the pent-up frustrations both of the long winter and of the institution of slavery.”⁹¹ Similarly, Graham Hodges contends that Pinkster celebrations “created a momentary equality and community among Africans and Dutch and was a safety valve for household tensions.”⁹² Indeed, similar regulated celebrations proved integral to maintaining slavery in other parts of North America, whether it was Election Day in New England, General Training Day in New Jersey, Sunday meetings in New Orleans’s Congo Square, or local “frolics” on southern plantations.⁹³ Such celebrations, akin to Pinkster, proved integral to sustaining slavery in slaveholding societies.

Crucial to these celebrations, the slaveholding class determined the location and parameters of the celebration and observed the festivities. While Pinkster appeared to be led by enslaved people, it was only possible with permission of the people who held them in bondage. Regardless of these limitations, Pinkster became one of the few opportunities during which enslaved New Yorkers could freely meet with family and friends in the public space, and thus this celebration became an especially powerful tool for them to create community, spend time with loved ones, and celebrate a shared African heritage.⁹⁴

The history of Pinkster and how it became such an important celebration to enslaved New Yorkers proves complex. In the Dutch Republic, Pinkster was both a religious and a folk celebration. Although Dutch authorities wanted to end the more popular celebrations that often accompanied these religious holidays, it appeared too challenging to completely abolish these days.⁹⁵ New Netherland’s authorities also strongly opposed such revelries, but many of these traditions, including Shrove Tuesday, Maydays, and New Year’s celebrations, survived in the region.⁹⁶

The folk festival connected to Pinkster became a popular event in many of the region’s Dutch communities. Traditionally, this celebration came out of several nonreligious spring celebrations of which Pinkster was the last one before summer.⁹⁷ Early descriptions of Pinkster in North America emphasized the social aspect of the holiday. Already in 1680, Jasper Dankaerts mentioned the Pinkster celebration in the colony when he wrote, “Pinxter (Whitsunday). Domine Niewenhuyse having recovered from his sickness, we went to hear him preach … 10th, Monday. The second day of Pinxter. We had several visitors whom we received with love and affection, each one according to his circumstances.”⁹⁸ Gabriel Furman’s history of Pinkster in Long Island similarly focused on the holiday’s social role: “Dutch inhabitants of Long Island … celebrated it by treating their friends to an abundance of good cheer, among which, and peculiar to this festival, was the ‘Soft Wafels [waffles],’ and by riding in parties about the country making visits.”⁹⁹ Both descriptions show that the Pinkster holiday served as an opportunity to spend time with family and friends.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Pinkster descriptions began to mention enslaved men and women who participated in the celebrations. Alexander Coventry, for instance, noted in his journal that Cuff, whom he enslaved, left to celebrate Pinkster, “a festival or feast among the Dutch.” Coventry then explained, “It is all frolicking to-day with the Dutch and the Negro. This is a holy day, Whitsunday, called among the Dutch ‘Pinkster,’ and they have eggs boiled in all sorts of colors.… And the frolicking,” he continued, “is kept up among the young folks, so that little else is done to-day but eat eggs and be jolly.”¹⁰⁰ Similarly, in 1797, William Dunlap identified Pinkster at Passaic Falls, New Jersey, as a Dutch holiday during which “blacks as well as their masters were frolicking and the women & children look’d peculiarly neat and well dressed.”¹⁰¹ Although enslaved people already took part in Pinkster activities, it was not until the early nineteenth century that the festivities were depicted as large celebrations that appeared to be predominantly African American.

The African American Pinkster celebration may appear unusual, but regulated celebrations by enslaved women, men, and children were not uncommon in North American communities. In fact, Stephanie Camp argues that organized events of entertainment served as a way “to control black pleasure by allowing it periodic, approved expression.” She explains that in order to ensure that these celebrations remained harmless enslavers would be “attending and surveilling the parties.”¹⁰² Similarly, Saidiya Hartman suggests that enslavers used these “innocent amusements” as a way “to cultivate hegemony, harness pleasure as a productive force, and regulate the modes of permitted expression.”¹⁰³ In Dutch New York, Pinkster proved similarly integral to successfully sustaining slavery.

Pinkster festivals became controlled celebrations in seemingly carefully chosen locations where enslaved people gathered under white surveillance. For one, the celebration was commonly restricted to a specific area of the town or city in which it was celebrated, probably so that the festivities could be monitored more effectively. According to James Fenimore Cooper’s semiautobiographical novel Satanstoe, Pinkster in New York City was celebrated on the commons, close to the gallows and the African burial ground.¹⁰⁴ Likewise, in Albany the celebration took place near the town’s prison and the gallows on what became known as Pinkster Hill. Reportedly, Pompey, Dean, and Bet were executed there in 1794 for their presumed role in the Albany fire.¹⁰⁵ Shane White claims that the celebration took place close to the gallows to “emphasize the functional role that the festivities played in reinforcing the social order.”¹⁰⁶ Thus, enslaved celebrants would have had constant reminders of the consequences if they extended their temporary liberty beyond the carefully orchestrated social and physical parameters of the celebration.

That white New Yorkers observed and surveilled the festival is apparent from descriptions of the celebration by these white spectators. In an 1857 Harper’s Magazine description of Albany’s Pinkster celebration, an Albany citizen recounted his childhood memories of Pinkster: “Pinkster Hill! What pleasant memories of my boyhood does that name bring up!”¹⁰⁷ Alexander Coventry and William Dunlap both described Pinkster as a festival that Dutch and African Americans attended. Moreover, James Fenimore Cooper noted in Satanstoe that during a Pinkster celebration in New York City, “hundreds of whites were walking through the fields, amused spectators.”¹⁰⁸ An article published in the Albany Centinel and reprinted in the Daily Advertiser provided further proof that white people were present when it mentioned that as part of the tradition the Pinkster king would collect revenue from the Black and white celebrants: “This consists in a levy of one shilling upon every black man’s tent, and two upon every tent occupied by a white man.”¹⁰⁹ The “Pinkster Ode,” an early nineteenth-century poem attributed to Absolom Aimwell (probably a pseudonym), referred to the diverse crowds: “Now, there will be, the eye to lure, / All the world in miniature. / Men of every grade you’ll see, / From lowest born to high degree. / Indians from the west will come, / And people from the rising sun. / There you’ll see brave mountaineers—/ The independent Vermonteers.”¹¹⁰ The ode then listed the various socioeconomic and ethnic groups that attended the festivities.

North America’s Pinkster celebrations also resembled various inversion traditions, which played an important role in maintaining social order in hierarchical societies. Reversing worlds served as a central element in various African, American, and European celebrations: those who were in power allowed those in lower social positions to have absolute authority for a short time period.¹¹¹ In his work on Christmas celebrations, Daniel Miller traces reversal as well as elections of kings back to Roman feasts. With regard to reversal, he states that in “both Saturnalia and Kalends we find the master feasting the slave and … this is merely the most extreme example of a sense of inversion from ordinary norms.”¹¹² Miller also explains that these celebrations often included other elements such as the election of a king who would be in charge of the festivities. Likewise, upside-down behavior played a role in a number of precolonial African traditions as detailed by Evan M. Zeusse, who points out that these practices often carried religious significance.¹¹³

In the Netherlands, the medieval folk celebration of Pinkster also included such elements of inversion. Historian Marc Wingens explains that in Amsterdam people elected the most beautiful girl of the neighborhood to be the Pinksterbloem (Pinkster flower) during the Pinkster celebration. This young woman would be crowned with a Pinksterkroon (Pinkster crown) made of leaves and flowers.¹¹⁴ She would go from door to door to collect money to fund the festival. Comparable inversion practices in which those people who had least social and political power were in charge of the festivities played a role in Pinkster celebrations across the Dutch Republic.¹¹⁵

The nineteenth-century texts that discuss Pinkster in North America describe a similar celebration. In fact, the North American Pinkster festivals in which enslaved men and women were in charge could be seen as a direct continuation of Dutch Pinkster celebrations. During Albany’s Pinkster, King Charles (or Charley) was the master of ceremonies, and according to some descriptions this king, clad in British military costume, paraded through the streets of Albany and collected revenue from participants.¹¹⁶ The “Pinkster Ode” detailed the king’s central role in the festivities: “Of Pinkster, who presumes to sing, / Must homage pay to Charles the King: / For Charles, like Israel’s mighty Saul, / Is nobly born, well made and tall.”¹¹⁷ Thus, it appeared as if Black New Yorkers received unmediated authority during these festivities. But while it seemed as if those who usually had the least social power commanded the celebration, the leading classes always contained and controlled such inversion rituals.

Although white New Yorkers served as important observers of the celebration, some early nineteenth-century sources began to complain about the participation of “a certain class of whites” in Albany’s Pinkster festival.¹¹⁸ These complaints suggested that some white people became more active participants instead of spectators. In one of its more outrageous descriptions, an Albany Centinel article complained, “Here lies a beastly black, and there a beastly white, sleeping or wallowing in the mud and dirt.”¹¹⁹ The multiethnic aspect of Pinkster became so problematic that Albany’s council felt the need to restrict white participation in the celebration in July of 1804:

No white person shall during the Whitsuntide Holiday erect or put up any Boothe Hut or Tent within the said City near to or where the Negroes shall erect or put up theirs, nor shall any white person expose for sale any beer, Cyder, mead, spirituous liquors, or cake, crackers or any kind of refreshment at the place or places where the Negroes shall meet to carry on their said amusements, under the penalty of $5 for every offence.¹²⁰

In fact, several historians have argued that it was increased white participation in Albany’s Pinkster celebrations that would eventually lead to its abolition in 1811.¹²¹

It remains unclear why there were no earlier sources that so vividly depicted the elaborate Pinkster festival as the early nineteenth-century sources did. Interestingly, most descriptions of its New England counterpart, Negro Election Day, also date back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.¹²² Perhaps most white authors initially found such celebrations unworthy of detailed reporting. Both Peter Burke and Jonathan Prude have argued that before the late eighteenth century there was no interest in describing the activities of the poor and enslaved. Instead, they focused on the “ladies and gentlemen.” Prude contends that even “travel accounts before the late eighteenth century generally skipped over the lower orders or conflated them with all ‘people’ of a region.”¹²³ Certainly, this focus on “high” rather than “low” culture could explain the absence of detailed Pinkster descriptions in the early eighteenth century. It is also possible that these predominantly African American Pinkster celebrations simply did not exist in the early eighteenth century. James and Lois Horton, for example, have suggested that African influences in the North, which were crucial in the development of these celebrations, became more influential in the second half of the eighteenth century when larger numbers of African captives were imported into the region.¹²⁴

Although these may have been contributing factors, it is also possible that the more elaborate late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Pinkster celebrations came out of an increasingly paternalistic approach to slavery that became more prevalent during this period. Although slavery in New York still expanded in the late eighteenth century, Enlightenment thought and revolutionary rhetoric had challenged the continued enslavement of fellow human beings. Paternalism served as a justification for their enslavement because it suggested that white people were not just superior, they also knew what was best for Black men, women, and children. Plus, as more enslaved New Yorkers considered manumission or an escape from slavery a real possibility, Pinkster may have been an attempt to mollify such efforts and tie enslaved men, women, and children more thoroughly to local communities. To this end, Dutch American enslavers allowed enslaved men, women, and children an opportunity to celebrate and not pay attention to the many laws that restricted their movements and activities in the public space through a festival they controlled and surveilled.

Such paternalistic attitudes were evident in the early nineteenth-century descriptions that noted Black participants’ supposed laziness and excessive alcohol consumption during the celebration, a tool often used to degrade Black people. An 1804 article in the Albany Centinel called “Death of Capt. Shawk” provided an especially detailed account to illustrate these so-called weaknesses of Black men:

Upon that great Dutch holiday, which they call Pinxster, [Captain Shawk] would dress himself in his best clothes, and indulge too much in idleness with his fellow blacks. This was the season in which he was most likely to be overcome with liquor. It is observable that whatever objections the blacks have to religion, they readily embrace, and are extremely fond of holidays; and wou’d be still more so, were they increased to double the number. This part of religion operates as a charm upon them; and may be one reason why the Dutch encourage the observance of such days. The servants wander abroad, drink, and frolic, all in honour of Pinxster; and have a licence and opportunity of committing excess and lewdness which they have not upon any other day.¹²⁵

Such stereotypical depictions of Black New Yorkers helped whites feel superior to their Black counterparts who according to such descriptions could not control themselves.¹²⁶ Robert Ross discusses similar portrayals of the Khoikhoi in South Africa by European colonists: in drama, literature, and drawings, the Khoikhoi were often portrayed drunk, which was the “antithesis to respectability.”¹²⁷ For similar reasons, Rashauna Johnson describes get-togethers in Congo Square as opportunities for free people “to enjoy a curated and contained blackness.”¹²⁸ Not surprisingly, some of the more famous descriptions of Pinkster were likely exaggerated accounts used to justify the continued enslavement and degradation of Black people.

A Celebration of Family, Friends, and Heritage

Although Pinkster may have been used to sustain slavery in the region, the festival nevertheless proved incredibly important to the enslaved men, women, and children who lived in Dutch American communities, as is evident from several surviving records. Sojourner Truth shared her fond memories of the Pinkster festival in her autobiography, suggesting that she considered returning to her former enslaver, John Dumont, so that she “might enjoy with [her former companions], once more, the coming festivities.”¹²⁹ During Pinkster, enslaved men, women, and children had an opportunity to escape their bondage, if only for a few days. They would join in all kinds of revelry, sell produce, and simply reconnect with family and friends. As some scholars have explained, the performances at the center of such get-togethers had an important emotional and spiritual meaning and could provide healing for people who experienced daily emotional and physical abuse.¹³⁰

Enslaved New Yorkers often lived in their enslavers’ homes with only few other enslaved men and women, and thus they often struggled to build a community. For these men, women, and children, Pinkster served as a rare opportunity to spend time with family and friends. Sojourner Truth’s narrative provides an especially chilling description of this important function of the festival during which “all her former companions enjoy[ed] their freedom for at least a little space, as well as their wonted convivialities, and in her heart she longed to be with them.”¹³¹ Her longing to join the festivities proved so strong that she even considered returning into slavery. At this point in her life, Truth had been forcefully separated from many loved ones, a typical experience for enslaved men and women in the region. Pinkster, then, gave them something to look forward to: a brief moment during which they could enjoy the company of some of the people from whom they had been separated.

Indeed, Pinkster served as a moment during which enslaved men and women could reconnect with each other; at the same time, they used the celebration to reconnect with their cultural roots. During the celebration, they would rejoice in predominantly African-originated traditions. In fact, for some enslaved Africans in the region, Pinkster must have been a familiar holiday, especially if they came to New York from predominantly Catholic areas in the Americas or Africa. By 1600 Catholicism had become the predominant religion in large parts of West Central Africa.¹³² Even though only a few sources mention Pentecost celebrations in these regions, Catholicism in West Central Africa has been well documented. West Central Africans used Catholic holidays to pay their respect to the ancestors, as was the case with the All Souls’ holiday. On this holiday, as well as on Holy Thursday, a procession would pass by churches and tombs, where the participants would light candles for the dead.¹³³ According to John Thornton, “Central Africans argued that it was best to attempt this form of mediumship in the presence of physical remains of the ancestor.”¹³⁴ Thus, it should not be surprising that Angolans usually visited the tombs of the dead during All Souls’ Day.¹³⁵

The importance and even physical presence of the ancestors integral to these West Central African celebrations was also evident in Pinkster festivities, which often took place close to African burial grounds. The “Pinkster Ode” mentions the proximity of Albany’s Pinkster Hill to the ancestors when it rhymed: “Now if you take a farther round / You’ll reach the Africs’ burying ground.”¹³⁶ But the similarities do not stop there. Various popular celebrations in West Central Africa carried elements similar to Pinkster. By far the most important Catholic celebration in the Kingdom of Kongo was St. James Day. This holiday commemorated the victory of the Christian Kongo King Afonso I over his pagan brother Mpanzu a Kitima, a symbol of the establishment of Christianity in the kingdom.¹³⁷ In Kongo, royal tax collectors collected state revenue and a large military review would take place.¹³⁸ This holiday connected the power of the ancestors with this world through the person of the king, also known as the Mani Kongo. St. James Day was a day of great celebration in Kongo, with parades, military dances, and various other festivities. Like Pinkster, it celebrated connections to the spirit world, had a king at the center of its festivities, and was accompanied by a collection of revenue. In his work on Pinkster, Jeroen Dewulf highlights that elements of Pinkster celebrations also resembled Kongolese sangamentos during which, as Cécile Fromont explains, Kongolese confraternities “elected kings and queens, sent off ambassadors, staged mock battles with sticks or fake swords, and collected funds.” West Central Africans exported these activities to various parts of the Americas, including New York.¹³⁹

Various West African cultures similarly knew celebrations that resembled, at least in part, Pinkster. In his descriptions of the Gold Coast, Willem Bosman mentioned that people there held a festival that took place at the end of harvesting time and one that he claimed served to expel the Devil, both of which he compared to a Dutch fair.¹⁴⁰ In a description of Cape Coast, Jean Barbot described a yearly festival on a date assigned by the king of Fetu when people from all over the region would gather for an eight-day celebration. As part of the festivities, a supreme court, which included the king, resolved disputes that the local courts had been unable to settle.¹⁴¹ Several scholars have connected the central role of the king in New England’s Negro Election Day to such West African traditions. Many of these kings or governors had Akan names, including Governor Quash Freeman of Derby, Governors Cuff and Quaw of Hartford, Roswell Quash Freeman of Derby, and Quash Piere of New Haven.¹⁴² In fact, Joseph Reidy linked Election Day to the Ashanti Adae ceremony during which the king would lead a procession.¹⁴³

Pinkster descriptions mentioned African-originated music and dance as important elements of the celebration. The Albany Centinel article, for example, claimed that after revenue had been collected, “sports of various kinds commence in what the different Negroes call Toto, or the Guinea dance.”¹⁴⁴ According to another account, “The dances were the original Congo dances, as they danced in their Native Africa.” The author of the text then provided an elaborate description of the music and dance of Albany’s Pinkster celebration:

The music consisted of a sort of drum, or instrument constructed out of a box with sheep skin heads, upon which old Charley did most of the beating, accompanied by singing some queer African air. Charley generally led off the dance, when Sambos and Philises, juvenile and antiquated, would put in the double-shuffle-heel-and-toe breakdown, in a manner that would have thrown Master Diamond and other modern cork-onions somewhat in the shade.¹⁴⁵

Likewise, the “Pinkster Ode” mentioned the music and dance that were part of the festival: “All beneath the shady tree / There they hold the jubilee. / Charles, the king, will then advance, / Leading on the Guinea dance.”¹⁴⁶

The music and dances integral to these Pinkster celebrations were likely expressions of African American religious life.¹⁴⁷ Several descriptions by Capuchin missionary Dionigi de Carli point to music as part of West Central African religious rituals. After De Carli baptized a young woman he named Anne, for instance, spectators “made a ring and took her in the midst of them, dancing, playing on their instruments, and crying, ‘Long live Anne, long live Anne.’ ”¹⁴⁸ In another account, De Carli described how after their baptism some Central Africans “fell a playing upon several instruments, a dancing, and shouting so loud, that they might be heard half a league off.”¹⁴⁹ Such descriptions showed the central role of music and dance in these West Central African religious experiences.

Pinkster festival participants also performed ring dances that are considered an important part of African religious rituals. The “Pinkster Ode” noted these ring dances when it rhymed, “Afric’s daughters full of glee, / Join the jolly jubilee. / Up the green and round the ring, / They will throng about their king. / Dancing true in gentle metre, / Moving every limb and feature.”¹⁵⁰ Sterling Stuckey demonstrates that such traditions survived in the Americas because most Africans included some variation of a ring dance in their religious worship.¹⁵¹ Like the ring shout, various African practices and traditions emerged in New York’s Pinkster celebrations. Enslaved New Yorkers had few opportunities to share such traditions with other Africans and African descendants, making the Pinkster festival incredibly valuable to its Black celebrants.

Even though Dutch Americans likely used Pinkster to sustain slavery through this temporary yet controlled celebration, the festival proved crucial to enslaved people’s emotional, social, and physical well-being. Not only did it give them an opportunity to meet with friends and family, it also gave them a chance to celebrate their heritage and religious beliefs. Not surprisingly, then, most enslaved New Yorkers cherished the celebration, and in some communities they continued to celebrate it into the late nineteenth century.¹⁵²

Although Domingo and Manuel Angola had been able to obtain their freedom and become landowners in seventeenth-century Manhattan, their eighteenth-century counterparts would not have the same opportunities. Over the course of the eighteenth century, Dutch New Yorkers’ increased reliance on the labor of enslaved people necessitated implementation of stricter regulations within public spaces. Whereas enslaved Africans in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony faced few restrictions on their movements in public spaces and access to public institutions, their eighteenth-century counterparts were forced to navigate a society in which their every move was controlled and surveilled and their access to public institutions often became severely limited or altogether prohibited. Public spaces became white space that enslaved people were required to access but where their activities and movements were closely monitored.

Even though enslaved people never became the majority of the region’s population and the economy did not rely solely on enslaved labor, the slaveholding class’s efforts to control enslaved New Yorkers in the public space much resembled that of slave societies elsewhere in the Americas. In an effort to control and contain enslaved people’s access to and movements in public spaces, New York’s enslavers created geographies of control by implementing, among others, legal restrictions, surveillance, and patrols. Yet, they could never fully control the movements and activities of enslaved New Yorkers, who developed alternative ways of knowing and navigating these public spaces, thus establishing geographies of resistance. Enslaved people moved through backyards and alleyways, and they timed their movements to avoid patrols. Even the carefully controlled Pinkster celebrations became opportunities of cultural, social, and in some cases physical resistance for Dutch New York’s enslaved men, women, and children.