Though today New York symbolizes a place of diversity and acceptance, under English colonial rule in the late 17th century existed a rigid slave system that treated African slaves harshly and strictly. Not only were slaves unable to own property, but they could not even practice their own religion. As Steven Jaffe writes in, “Educating the Enslaved in Colonial New York”, “Many New York slaveholders resisted the idea of baptizing their slaves or teaching them to read the Bible, fearing that Christianity and literacy might embolden their human property to ask for freedom, or even try to seize it through violent rebellion.” However, Elie Neau directly challenged this notion in 1704 when he opened a revolutionary institution that for the next 19 years would teach the enslaved how to be “thinking literate Christians”. Though he wasn’t an abolitionist, his belief that all people had the right to be educated and religious set the foundation for antislavery activism in the future.
As Jaffe writes in, “Leather Aprons & Silk Stockings: The Coming of the American Revolution in New York”, this brutal treatment of slaves and the taxes and regulations on working New Yorkers sparked a sense of rebellion within them. The New York Tea Party on April 22,1774 showed Parliament that New Yorkers were no longer willing to be oppressed. Workingmen known as “leather aprons” and lawyers known as “silk stockings” felt these similar sentiments. Prior to and during the American Revolution, these groups were forced to work together. However, the aristocratic patricians and the laborers who protested in the streets often couldn’t see eye to eye. Nicholas Lampert in, “Visualizing a Partial Revolution” explains this when describing Paul Revere’s publication of, “The most influential Boston Massacre image.” His image did not accurately depict reality because it showed a revolution led by educated and wealthy whites, while in truth it was led by a diverse and multi-cultured mob. Jaffe concludes though that despite it being a violent war with the tensions between the “leather aprons” and the “silk stockings” constantly arising, in 1783 George Washington triumphantly rode into the streets of New York. However, though the victory was shared between both groups of Patriots, “Those divisions would spark future conflicts and future activism in the name of the revolution’s principles of liberty and independence.”
Lampert mentions that farmers and artisans were left out from the Constitutional Congress and were not invited to draft the new Constitution. This was particularly troubling because the absence of the working class meant that if a strong federal government was created, one again they would be oppressed. Liberty Poles were set up and resistance by laborers one again began. Simply put, “The success of the Conservative elites did not defuse class tensions during the War of Independence (1775-1783) or after. If anything, the tensions heightened.”
This is evident when looking at the 3/5 compromise. The decision to count three fifths of the slaves in a state’s population, “would help to elect slaveholding presidents” from 1800 to the 1850s. It is also evident when looking at the U.S. Voting Rights Timeline. In 1776, only landowners could vote, and the majority of landowners were white male Protestants over the age of 21. In 1787, because there was no national standard for voting, white male landowners still controlled voting for the most part. This is why George Washington was elected in 1787 by only 6% of the population. And lastly in 1790, only “free white immigrants” could become naturalized citizens.
Therefore, despite their undeniable success in the mid-18th century, it seems that at this point in history, many New Yorkers must have questioned how much progress they had really made since the days of Elie Neau.
