New Jersey in 1775-1776 was home to a mixed economy (agrarian, ironworks, and lumber) that supplied the Revolution. It was also a place where contradictory views regarding race, class, gender, and loyalty played out in conflicts throughout the state, earning the nickname, the “Crossroads of the American Revolution.” New Jersey’s geography, with the British Navy occupying Sandy Hook and Staten Island for much of the war, kept Patriot sentiment complicated throughout the conflict. New Jersey was at once a northern and a southern state. Its lower tip reached below Baltimore, allowing slaveholding culture to take root alongside northern sensibilities. The state thus, like all others, embodied a fundamental contradiction: colonists invoking metaphorical “abject slavery” to describe British rule while themselves enslaving thousands.
Interviewees
-
Linda Caldwell Eps
- President and CEO, 1804 Consultants
-
James Amemasor
- Research Specialist, New Jersey Historical Society
