Slavery in New York

To tell its story, Slavery in New York will bring together more than 100 original artifacts and art objects, 40 original documents, and reproductions of another 200-plus historic documents and images. In addition, the exhibition will feature more than 20 art pieces newly commissioned for this show; 27 multi-media presentations; four visitor-talkback monitors; five computer-interactive learning stations; and three special school-group educational activity areas, with hands-on learning opportunities.

Important objects from the New-York Historical Society collections. (click to see list)

Portrait of Peter Stuyvesant, the last and greatest director-general of the Dutch New Netherland colony, probably by Henri Couturier, ca. 1660; one of the oldest and most important paintings produced in colonial America; given to the N-YHS by Stuyvesant's great-great-great-great-grandson in 1909. (NYHS 1829.1)

The record of the coroner's inquest into the murder of Augustus Grasset by the slave Toby and his 37 confederates during the 1712 slave revolt in New York, one of the earliest in British North America. Recently arrived from the Gold Coast, this group of Coramantee and Pawpaw men refused to accept a lifetime of slavery in New York, and several committed suicide rather than be captured by the authorities after their revolt collapsed. (NYHS Library Manuscript Collection. NYC. Misc. Box 41)

Portrait of Rip Van Dam, ca. 1720, attributed to Evert Duyckinck, and an accompanying portrait of Mrs. Van Dam. A powerful merchant and political leader, Van Dam began his career trading in furs from the Hudson Valley, but soon became New York's leading trader in Mediterranean goods, especially wines. Like almost all New York merchants, he invested regularly in slave trading voyages off the coast of Africa. The New-York Historical Society also has Van Dam's estate inventory, which will be available for exploration via a computer-interactive program. (NYHS 1862.3)

Trading book of the slave trading sloop Rhode Island, owned by Philip Livingston and Sons, New York merchants, for a voyage along the African coast in 1749. The book details the day-to-day trading of New York foodstuffs and rum for European manufactured goods and African slaves. It also lists the slaves who died aboard the ship as it completed its triangular trade. One of Livingston's sons in this business, also named Philip, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. (NYHS Library B.V. Rhode Island)

Looking glass, with adjoining candleholders, from the Beekman mansion, Mount Pleasant, which stood at 51st Street and First Avenue, far out of town. The Beekmans had white servants as well as four slaves. (NYHS 1951.424a)

Silver pepper box made by Simeon Soumain, ca. 1730. In 1741, when the "Great Negro Plot" seemed to threaten the city with destruction, Soumain's slave Tom told the authorities that the conspirators asked him to get swords from his master's shop. Two years later, Soumain advertised that a pepper box much like this had been stolen. (NYHS 1976.32ab)

Silver coffeepot, made by Peter van Dyck, ca. 1730, probably made for Susanna Phillipse, daughter of Frederick Phillipse, the master of Phillipsburg Manor in Yonkers and one of the colony's leading slave traders and owners. Van Dyck was also known to purchase stolen silver from New York's slaves. (NYHS 1972.26)

Roundabout chair, ca. 1760-1790. It has a square seat with an upholstered slip seat, and an under-slip seat with circular cut-out for chamber pot. This was evidently used as a potty chair. The exhibition will include a pewter chamber-pot that fit into the cut-out. New York's slaves were expected to empty chamber pots into the rivers each morning and evening. (NYHS 1911.92)

David Grim's remarkable Plan of the City and Environs of New York is a map drawn in 1813 that represents the city of Grim's youth, in the eventful years of 1741-42. In addition to beautifully rendered drawings of the churches, public building, and even the first synagogue, Grim located the site where the "Plot Negro [was] hanged" and "Plot Negro burned," referring to the massive retribution visited upon New York slaves after the discovery of an apparent conspiracy to burn the town down in 1741.

Francis Guy's painting of the Tontine Coffee House in 1797, showing New York's busy port growing to national commercial leadership. Guy's painting includes several black New Yorkers. Along with a 1796 watercolor of Government House in the Battery that is also in the N-YHS collection, this is among the first works to represent blacks in the city's history. (NYHS 1907.32)

Records of the New York Manumission Society, the major force behind the adoption of gradual emancipation and then the abolition of slavery in New York State. In addition to its advocacy role, the NYMS also rescued free blacks threatened with kidnapping and sale to the South and fought for the improvement of the condition of young black chimney sweeps. (NYHS Library: Y1795.New York Manum. Vol. I)

Portrait of Peter Williams, Sr., ca. 1810-1815. One of the earliest oil portraits of a black American, the subject was a leader in founding the first African Methodist Episcopal church in New York City. He fought on the American side during the War for Independence, which was rather uncommon - most New York blacks took advantage of the British offer of freedom to join the Redcoats. (NYHS X.173)

Three watercolor miniatures of Pierre Toussaint, his wife and his niece, ca. 1825. Toussaint, a Haitian immigrant, was a successful hairdresser, emblematic both of the hard-working newcomer to New York and the free generation of black New Yorkers eager to establish themselves in business and the professions. (NYHS 1920.4-6)

Six engravings of "Life in New York" by Anthony Imbert, ca. 1829, show the emergence of racist representations of black New Yorkers. Just as slavery was ending, black New Yorkers confronted increasing hostility from white elites, from Irish immigrants, and from local politicians. The advent of universal manhood suffrage for white adults was accompanied in New York by the imposition of property requirements for black voters that eventually reduced black political participation to a minimum in the 1820s. (NYHS Print Room 010-1829-3 neg#63903; NYHS PR 010-1829-9 neg#36838A; NYHS, PR 010-1829-6 neg#63906; NYHS, PR 010-1829-7 neg # 60966; NYHS, PR 010-1829-2 neg#63902; NYHS, PR 010-1829-11neg#63922)

Freedom's Journal, the first black owned and edited newspaper in the United States, began publication in April 1827. Edited by Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, it was an eloquent spokesman for equal rights and a major milestone in the history of the black community in the United States.

Objects borrowed by the New-York Historical Society for the Slavery in New York exhibition. (click to see list)

Six manuscript documents, written in Old Dutch, from the New York State Archives, reveal the tremendous importance of slavery in the making of New Amsterdam and the New Netherland colony. Originally part of the records of the Dutch West India Company, these documents show how company officials like Stuyvesant tried to integrate fertile Hudson Valley farms into a slave- and sugar-trading system. Also in the show is the actual 1644 document by which Dutch director-general Willem Kieft granted "half-freedom" and lands around what is now Washington Square to Africans who had been enslaved by the company in New Amsterdam since 1627.

The Duke's Plan, the first map of English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, is being reproduced for the exhibition. An accurate rendering of the small seaport village, it sat unidentified in the British Museum for two centuries until it was rediscovered by George H. Moore, librarian of the New-York Historical Society, in 1858.

From the William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan, the exhibition is borrowing the original "Philipsburg Proclamation" of 1779, in which British General Henry Clinton promised freedom to slaves who would escape to British-occupied New York City from their Patriot households. This document helped transform the War for Independence into a struggle for black freedom.

The Book of Negroes is the list of black New Yorkers, loyal to the British Crown, who were transported to Nova Scotia at the end of the Revolutionary War, thereby evading re-enslavement by their Patriot owners. Among the 3,000 names is that of Deborah Squash, once the property of Gen. George Washington, who had escaped to Mount Vernon and made her home and married in New York City during the war. The book is being reproduced by Colonial Williamsburg, with permission from the National Archives Public Record Office in London.

The New York City Municipal Archives is lending the exhibition the original 1795 petition of Isaac Fortune and fourteen of his associates to the city authorities for land upon which to build a new burying-ground and a house of worship. The document, signed in their own hands, is the first instance where black New Yorkers spoke as citizens to their government on their own behalf.