Slavery in the North

Northern Emancipation

Denying the Past



Massachusetts Slavery

Massachusetts Emancipation

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New York Slavery

New York Emancipation

Pennsylvania Slavery

Pennsylvania Emancipation

Race Relations in Pennsylvania

Rhode Island


A Missed Chance

Northern Profits from Slavery

Fugitive Slaves





Back to Africa

Keeping the North White



Slaves were mentioned in Hartford from 1639 and in New Haven from 1644. As in the rest of New England, they were few until about 1700. Connecticut citizens did not participate directly in the slave trade in the late 17th century (at least that's what the colonial governor assured the British Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations). But the governor's report in 1680 implied that Massachusetts merchants were bringing in three or four black slaves a year from Barbados. Since the average price of a black slave in Connecticut was £22 that year and the rate in Massachusetts was £10 to £20, this was a worthwhile venture for a Boston slaver.

Even in the early 1700s, however, direct slave imports to Connecticut were considered too few to be worth the trouble of taxing. The governor reported only 110 white and black servants in Connecticut in 1709. In 1730, the colony had a black population of 700, out of a total enumeration of 38,000.

Yet on the eve of the Revolution, Connecticut had the largest number of slaves (6,464) in New England. Jackson Turner Main, surveying Connecticut estate inventories, found that in 1700 one in 10 inventories included slaves, rising to one in 4 on the eve of the Revolution.[1] Between 1756 and 1774, the proportion of slave to free in Connecticut increased by 40 percent. All the principal families of Norwich, Hartford, and New Haven were said to have one or two slaves. By 1774, half of all the ministers, lawyers, and public officials owned slaves, and a third of all the doctors.[2] But Connecticut's large slave population apparently was based in the middle class. More people had the opportunity to own slaves than in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, so more did so. "The greater prosperity of Connecticut's inhabitants and their frugal and industrious habits were responsible for this situation. The wealth of the colony was also more equally distributed, with few extremes of riches or poverty."[3]

The largest increase came in the period 1749-1774. By the latter year, New London County had become the greatest slaveholding section of New England, with almost twice as many slaves as the most populous slave county in Massachusetts. New London was both an industrial center and the site of large slave-worked farms; with 2,036 slaves, it accounted for almost one-third of all the blacks in Connecticut. New London town itself, with 522 blacks and a white population of 5,366, led the state in number of slaves and percentage of black inhabitants.



Like the black codes of the South and Midwest in the 19th century, enforcement was uneven, and the real value of the law seemed to be in harassment, discouragement of further settlement, and its service as a constant reminder to free blacks in Connecticut that their existence was precarious and dependent on white toleration.

Connecticut slavery lacked the "paternalism" that characterized Southern slavery, so that even from the early days, the colony had a problem with masters who simply turned out their slaves when the blacks got too old or worn-out to work. Their descendants later would treat factory hands that way, but masters who cast off old slaves made for a burden on the towns, so that by 1702 Connecticut passed a law making masters or their executors or heirs liable for freed blacks, should the ex-slaves become indigent. This evidently was not enough, and in 1711 the law was revised to make it incumbent on masters to support their former slaves.

As in other Northern communities that would later object to the Fugitive Slave Act, authorities in Connecticut had been diligent in prosecuting runaways when slavery was part of their state's economy. Ferrymen were forbidden to take runaways across rivers under pain of a fine of 5 shillings. The authorities would make an arrest on the slightest pretext, and keep the black person in jail while advertisements were run in the newspapers, seeking an owner. They had the power to arrest suspects without warrants in such cases, and even if the seized blacks could prove they were free, but traveling without a pass, they still had to pay court costs.

"Connecticut's lawmakers were extremely cautious about moving against slavery. Negroes were more numerous in the state than in the rest of New England combined, and racial anxieties were correspondingly more acute."[5] This pattern was well-observed from the South: the more blacks lived in a Northern state, the more reluctantly that state approached the topic of emancipation.

Emancipation bills were rejected by the Connecticut Legislature in 1777, 1779, and 1780. Connecticut lawmakers did, however, in 1774 pass a law to halt the importation of slaves ("whereas the increase of slaves in this Colony is injurious to the poor and inconvenient ....").




1. Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut, Princeton University Press, 1983, p.177.
2. ibid., table 5.1, etc.
3. ibid., p.138.

2003 - Slavery in the North - About the Author