Ebony and Ivy

by Craig Steven Wilder

  3. Kierner, Traders and Gentlefolk, 152–53; Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

  4. The founding of the College of Philadelphia has traditionally been dated at 1755, when the college charter was granted. I am using the date when the academy was first founded, which conflicts with the University of Pennsylvania’s preference, 1740. I have no desire to resolve the intercollegiate contest to claim ancient status and any attendant historical flatteries. In 1740 the evangelist George Whitefield began an ephemeral school for the poor in Philadelphia, but the project failed for a lack of funds. In 1749 the trustees of a new academy drew up a constitution, and purchased and renovated the “New Building” that Whitefield had raised. The constitution included provisions for admitting destitute children to a charity school under the board’s governance. The trustees later announced that their academy would open in January 1751, and the charity school opened later that year. The 1740 founding date rests on overlap between the two boards, the purchase of the Whitefield building, the decision to reserve space for Whitefield’s use, and the agreement to reestablish the charity school.

  Numerous colleges have claims to founding moments that predate their charters. In the 1740s the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock began his English and Indian school in Connecticut, and formalized the academy a decade later. His Connecticut school had direct ties to and continuities with Dartmouth College. However, the history of Dartmouth College begins in 1769, when the charter was issued. Similarly, the University of Delaware (1921) has a long and complicated lineage with New Ark Academy (1743). The Penn family had proprietorship over Delaware and governed from Philadelphia, which had its own college. This colonial structure also kept the New Ark Academy trustees from elevating the school beyond the preparatory grades.

  While the claim to a 1740 founding is a reach, the Philadelphians were running a college course well before their 1755 charter and before King’s College opened in New York City. Charters are imperfect tools for dating colleges. Many colleges were chartered several years before the establishment of a course of study and the admission of scholars. In contrast, students at the Philadelphia academy were taking a college course quite a few years before the trustees decided to augment their 1749 charter to empower the professors to grant degrees. In December 1754 the board casually ordered two of their number “to draw up a Clause to be added to the Charter for that Purpose,” having already agreed that offering degrees “would probably be a Means of advancing the Reputation of the Academy.” The trustees brought the revised charter to the governor, who approved their plan. In June 1755 they reelected Benjamin Franklin to the presidency and “assume[d] the Name and Stile of The Trustees of the College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania, by which Name they are incorporated.”

  The College of New Jersey, the College of Philadelphia, and the College of Rhode Island had colonial charters. King’s College, Queen’s College, and Dartmouth College had royal charters.

  The trustees originally located the College of Rhode Island in the rural town of Warren, and then moved it to Providence in 1770. “Constitutions of the Publick Academy in the City of Philadelphia” and entries from 13 November 1749 to 10 June 1755, in Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Academy and Charitable Schools of the University of Pennsylvania, vol. 1, 1749–1768 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1974), vi, 1–53; Thomas Penn and Richard Penn, Charter of Incorporation for the Academy of Newark, 10 November 1769, reprinted in “Board of Trustees, Minute Book, June 5, 1783–June 24, 1952,” University Archives, University of Delaware; John S. Whitehead, The Separation of College and State: Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, 1776–1876 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).

  5. K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company (London: Longmans, Green, 1957), 15, 38–39, 65.

  6. Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York (Albany, NY: James B. Lyon, 1901), I:79; Richard C. Simmons “Mrs. Morris and the Philipse Family, American Loyalists,” Winterthur Portfolio, 1965, 14–16; see order for Abraham Martensen Clock and Frederick Philipse to report on work, 11 May 1660, Historic Hudson Valley Library; Jean Zimmerman, The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Harvest Books, 2006), esp. 86–111.

  7. The Margarit was built in New York in 1695. Two versions of the orders were drafted. “Orders for Capt. Samuel Burgos Com[m]ander of the Barcque Maragarit bound to Madagascar &c Second Voyage,” 9 June 1698; also see the register record for the ship dated 9 April 1698, in Frederick Philipse, Merchant Books and Correspondence, 2 Books, HCA 1/98, National Archives, United Kingdom.

  8. Jacob Judd, “Frederick Philipse and the Madagascar Trade,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, October 1971, 354–74; Oscar and Mary Handlin, “Origins of the Southern Labor System,” William and Mary Quarterly, April 1950, 214–15; Davies, Royal African Company, 122–35; Dixon Ryan Fox, Caleb Heathcote, Gentleman Colonist: The Story of a Career in the Province of New York, 1692–1721 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 23–32; Zimmerman, Women of the House, 179–85; Patricia U. Bonomi, Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).

  9. Serena R. Zabin, Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 34–37; Lawrence H. Leder and Vincent P. Carosso, “Robert Livingston (1654–1728): Businessman of Colonial New York,” Business History Review, March 1956, 18–27; Clare Brandt, An American Aristocracy: The Livingstons (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1986), 2; Kierner, Traders and Gentlefolk, 39, 71–72; Randall, Alexander Hamilton, 54–55; Thomas Clap, The Annals or History of Yale-College, in New-Haven, in the Colony of Connecticut, from the First Founding thereof, in the Year 1700, to the Year 1766: with an Appendix, Containing the Present State of the College, the Method of Instruction and Government, with the Officers, Benefactors and Graduates (New Haven: John Hotchkiss and B. Mecom, 1766), 109–11; Milton M. Klein, ed., The Independent Reflector, or Weekly Essays on Sundry Important Subjects More Particularly Adapted to the Province of New-York by William Livingston and Others (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 6–7.

  10. Davies, Royal African Company, 123–51; Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 201–6; C. M. MacInnes, Bristol and the Slave Trade (Bristol: Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1963), 3–9; Bristol Museums and Art Gallery, Slave Trade Trail Around Central Bristol (Bristol, 1999); James A. Rawley and Stephen A. Behrendt, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 129–65.

  11. By the 1740s Bristol’s claim to being England’s “premier slaving port” had slipped, argues David Richardson, but it remained an important center for organizing and financing the Africa trade, and for coordinating investors, ship owners, buyers, and factors in England, Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. The Bristol traders maintained a consistently profitable commerce in people despite the financial power of London and a rivalry with Liverpool.

  In September 1770 Henry Cruger Jr.’s Nancy returned to New York City after a journey to Africa that took more than a year. It carried 239 captives, and the venture killed 54 people. Cruger registered this ship in Bristol.

  Jaspar Dankers and Peter Sluyter, Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies in 1679–80, trans. and ed. Henry C. Murphy (Brooklyn: Long Island Historical Society, 1867), 30, 37; W. E. Minchinton, ed., Politics and the Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century: The Petitions of the Society of Merchant Venturers, 1698–1803 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1963); “Waste [Account] Book of Henry and John Cruger, June 28, 1762–January 15, 1768,” Henry and John Cruger manuscript collection, New-York Historical Society; Harrington, New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution, 12–13, 194–97; “Van Schaack Famil
y Genealogical Notes,” Van Schaack Family Papers, Box 1, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

  12. Peter Van Brugh Livingston insurance papers for the sloop Good Intent, 31 March 1737, Storke and Gainsborough, Correspondence with American Merchants, NYS Miscellaneous Collections, Box 5, New York State Archives; David Richardson, ed., Bristol, Africa and the Eighteenth Century Slave Trade to America (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1986–1996), III:xiv–xxxi, 233; Harrington, New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution, 16–17, 194–97.

  13. Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1930–35), III:492, 511; Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Viking, 2007), 94–97; Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).

  14. Rediker, Slave Ship, 73–78.

  15. Miller, Way of Death, 695–96; T. Aubrey, The Sea-Surgeon, Or the Guinea Man’s Vade Mecum. In Which is Laid Down, The Method of Curing Diseases as Usually Happen Abroad, Especially on the Coast of Guinea; With the Best Way of Treating Negroes, Both in Health and in Sickness (London: John Clarke, 1729), 127–29; Kenneth F. Kipple and Brian T. Higgins, “Mortality Caused by Dehydration During the Middle Passage,” in Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 322–30; Wyndham B. Blanton, “Epidemics, Real and Imaginary, and Other Factors Influencing Seventeenth Century Virginia’s Population,” Symposium on Colonial Medicine in Commemoration of the 350th Anniversary of the Settlement of Virginia (Williamsburg: Jamestown-Williamsburg-Yorktown Celebration Commission and the Virginia 350th Anniversary Commission, 1957), 64–72.

  16. Jasper Farmar, “A Journal of the Proceedings of the Ship Catherine, Jasp[er] Farmar Master[,] from New York and by God’s Grace Toward One Part of ye Coast of Africa This Second Voyage Begun Sept 6th 1732,” Ship Logs, 1732–1861, MG 49, collection of the New Jersey Historical Society.

  17. Boston News-Letter, 7–14 April 1712, 14–21 April 1712, 21–28 April 1712; Kenneth Scott, “The Slave Insurrection in New York in 1712,” The New-York Historical Society Quarterly, January 1961, 47–52, 62–67; Butler, Becoming America, 8–46; Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 92–99; “An Act for Preventing Suppressing and Punishing the Conspiracy and Insurrection of Negroes and Other Slaves,” 10 December 1712, and “An Act for the More Effectual Preventing and Punishing the Conspiracy and Insurrection of Negro and Other Slaves; for the Better Regulating Them and for Repealing the Acts Herein Mentioned Relating Thereto,” 29 October 1730, The Colonial Laws of New York, from the Years 1664 to the Revolution (Albany, NY: James B. Lyon, 1894), I:761–67, II:679–88; “A Law for Regulating Negro and Indian Slaves in the Night Time,” 10 March 1713, Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1675–1776 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1905), III:30–31.

  18. Daniel Horsmanden, The New York Conspiracy (1744; Boston: Beacon, 1971), 395–405.

  19. Ibid., 22–31.

  20. A British lawyer ruined when the South Sea Bubble collapsed, Horsmanden had fled to the colonies to rebuild his life. His remaining connections in England and William Byrd, a Virginia cousin, helped him secure an appointment to New York governor William Cosby’s council. The governor rewarded Horsmanden’s loyalty with serial assignments, including a 1737 appointment to the Supreme Court. Graham Russell Hodges, Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 88–98; Jill Lepore, New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (New York: Knopf, 2005), esp. 19–26; Zabin, Dangerous Economies, 132–58; Thelma Wills Foote, Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 159–86; Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 43–46; David Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 21–30; Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Norton, 1974).

  21. Thomas J. Davis, “Introduction,” to Horsmanden, New York Conspiracy, ix–xi; George Clarke, 17 April 1741, General Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, for All the British Plantations, April 1741; Mrs. Peter DeLancey to Cadwallader Colden, 1 June 1741, in The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1937), VIII:264–66, and anonymous letter, 269–72.

  22. Horsmanden, New York Conspiracy, 31–33. The lieutenant governor confirmed the rewards and pardons for voluntary witnesses. See letters from George Clarke, 17 April 1741 and 19 June 1741, General Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, for All the British Plantations, April and June 1741.

  23. Horsmanden, New York Conspiracy, 37–39, 200; Mrs. Peter DeLancey to Cadwallader Colden, 1 June 1741; American Weekly Mercury, 23 July 1741.

  24. Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, III:507; New York Colony Treasurer’s Office, “Reports of Goods Imported (Manifest Books) to New York,” Boxes 1–2, New York State Archives; James G. Lydon, “New York and the Slave Trade, 1700–1774,” William and Mary Quarterly, April 1978, 388–89; Horsmanden, New York Conspiracy, esp. 395–96.

  25. William Dunlap, History of the New Netherlands, Province of New York, and State of New York, to the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (New York: Carter and Thorp, 1839), 324–29; Horsmanden, New York Conspiracy, 88–114, 227–28.

  26. Emphasis added. Copy of Frederick Philipse’s last will and testament, 26 October 1700, Historic Hudson Valley Library.

  27. Ibid.

  28. See the lists of those taken into custody and the record of their disposition, in Horsmanden, New York Conspiracy, appendices.

  29. New York Colony Treasurer’s Office, “Reports of Goods Imported (Manifest Books) to New York,” Boxes 3–12; Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, III:462–508. Also see Henry Cuyler’s 14 June 1734 protest with petition of affirmation from Mayor Robert Livingston on the seizure of the Mary, Storke and Gainsborough, Correspondence with American Merchants, NYS Miscellaneous Collections, Box 4; Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth: American Papers (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1895), II:5.

  30. New-York Gazette, 13 May 1751; “The Diary of William Chancellor: A Ship’s Doctor on a Slaving Expedition to Africa, 1749–1751,” IV:9–12, Edward Anderson Williams Papers, Maryland Historical Society; Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London: J. Phillips, 1788), 25–28; Darold D. Wax, “A Philadelphia Surgeon on a Slaving Voyage to Africa, 1749–1751,” Pennsylvania Magazine, October 1968, 465–93.

  31. Rediker, Slave Ship, esp. 187–99; entries for the seventh day, Thomas Prince, “Journal of Voyages to Barbados, 1709–1711,” Massachusetts Historical Society; Thomas Prince, A Chronological History of New-England, in the Form of Annals … (Boston: Kneeland and Green, 1736).

  32. “Diary of William Chancellor,” IV:1–12.

  33. Darold D. Wax, “Negro Imports into Pennsylvania, 1720–1766,” Pennsylvania History, July 1965, 274; Theophilus Conneau, A Slaver’s Log Book, or 20 Years’ Residence in Africa (1854; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 81–87; Falconbridge, Account of the Slave Trade, 23–25; Benjamin Silliman, A Journal of Travels in England, Holland and Scotland, and of Two Passages over the Atlantic in the Years 1805 and 1806 (New York: D. and G. Bruce, 1810), I:3–4, 47; Benjamin Silliman, A Visit to Europe in 1851 (New York: George P. Putnam, 1853), I:29.

  34. “Diary of William Chancellor,” 9–12, 50; Wax, “Philadelphia Su
rgeon on a Slaving Voyage,” 465–93.

  35. Lydon, “New York and the Slave Trade,” 393; John Watts to Gedney Clarke, Esq., 30 March 1762, The Letter Book of John Watts: Merchant and Councillor of New York, January 1, 1762–December 22, 1765, vol. LXI of The Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1928 (New York: Printed for the Society, 1928), 31–32; Joyce Lee Malcolm, Peter’s War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 5; Phillis Wheatley, Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley: A Native African and a Slave. Dedicated to the Friends of the Africans, 2nd ed. (Boston: Light and Horton, 1835), 9–10.

  36. Kenneth P. Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards’s Defense of Slavery,” Massachusetts Historical Review IV (2002): 23–30; Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 125; Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630–1880 (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1882), II:262; William B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789 (New York: Hillary House, 1963), II:627; Peter Faneuil to Capt. Peter Buckley (Bulkeley), 3 February 1738, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1863–1864 (Boston: Printed for the Society, 1864), 7:418–19; William Vassall to James Wedderburn, 22 April 1771, “Letter Book 1, November 27th, 1769–July 24th, 1786,” 23–24, Vassall Letter Books, 1769–1800, collection of the Boston Public Library; Frank Edward Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, James Bowdoin and the Patriot Philosophers (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004), 46; Historical Register of Harvard University, 1636–1926 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937), 70; Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 1860–61 (Cambridge, MA: Welch, Bigelow, 1862), 45; Daniel C. Littlefield, “Plantations, Paternalism, and Profitability: Factors Affecting African Demography in the Old British Empire,” Journal of Southern History, May 1981, 167–82.