Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1863. By Graham Russell Hodges, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1999, pp. 413, US $45.00 (cloth), US $18.95 (paper).
This review was first published in Australasian Journal of American Studies 20, no.2 (December, 2001), 110-112.
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Slavery and Community in the New York Region
Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1863
Graham Russell Hodges
Reviewed by Michael A. McDonnell, University of Sydney
Of late students of early America and of slavery in particular have been blessed with several studies that have helped draw a rich and varied large-scale picture of slavery on the North American mainland. In particular, both Ira Berlin in Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America and Philip D. Morgan in Slave Counterpoint have helped highlight the possibilities and opportunities for synthesis, as well as the value in approaching the study of slavery a longer period. Such an approach has proved particularly valuable in the field of early African American and slave studies. It can not only make the best use of the sources available, but also helps counteract the tendency of students to see slavery and racism as static entities, pre-historically ordained rather than constructed and nurtured by our not too ancient forebears. Graham Russell Hodges, professor of early American history at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, makes a valuable contribution to this latest literature with his Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1863. Building on the work of Shane White for New York and James Oliver Horton, Lois E. Horton, Joanne Pope Melish, Gary B. Nash, Jean R. Soderlund and William D. Pierson more generally, Root & Branch tackles the experience of free blacks and slaves in one of the most important areas of the mainland northern colonies - New York City and its environs, now home to the largest concentration of African Americans in the United States. In documenting the slow rise, entrenchment and ultimate though by no means inevitable demise of slavery in New York and East Jersey, Hodges also builds upon and extends his own significant corpus of works which include New York City Cartmen, 1667-1850 and Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1660-1860, and The Black Loyalist Directory: African Americans in Exile after the American Revolution, among others. Hodges begins his story, or perhaps more accurately, his stories, with the arrival of Jan Rodrigues, an Atlantic Creole who was among the first non-indigenous residents of Manhattan Island, and ends with a gripping account of the blatantly anti-black New York City draft riots of 1863. In the different parts of Hodges' sweeping narrative, he covers some now familiar ground: the first Dutch settlement of New Netherland with its free black and slave co 800, or 10% of the early population; the English take-over of the colony and the "closing vise of slavery"; the black rebellions of 1712 and 1741, both of which contributed to harsher slave laws and the entrenchment of slavery; the American Revolution as a war of black liberation; and the tortuously slow emancipation process in New York and New Jersey. He also breaks some new ground, particularly in the last two chapters documenting the rise of an intellectually vibrant and clearly African influenced free black culture amidst a growing and virulent racism among whites in the region. The narrative is largely sustained by an analysis of the struggles of African Americans over the degrees of freedom they enjoyed, or were made to endure. In this light, Hodges chronological scope makes more sense, for African Americans from the start had to struggle with the burden of an uncertain status in the colonies, and there were still over 200 blacks enslaved in New Jersey as late as 1850. Freedom came slowly in the middle states, excruciatingly slowly for many rural African Americans in the area, and Hodges' last chapter makes clear that freedom also came with a heavy price. Though Root & Branch ranges widely, Hodges focuses on four main interpretive - and interrelated - themes throughout: slave culture, work, religion and resistance.
Each chapter is organized roughly around these themes and throughout, Hodges emphasises the agency of black Americans themselves. He does this mainly through constructing hundreds of short narratives of the experiences of individuals, families, or groups of free and enslaved blacks. Indeed, the book is clearly a product of prodigious research into church records, personal reminiscences, oral histories, diaries and a myriad of other sources through which Hodges is able to paint numerous colourful and vibrant portraits of African Americans at work, play, church, and in rebellion. Though at times these stories verge on the anecdotal, they do bring to life many of the raw statistics that are found throughout the work, and they do help emphasise the tremendous diversity of the African American experience in New York and East Jersey. Indeed, given that Hodges' geographical scope takes in town and countryside, such an approach helps showcase the wide variety of work experiences, religious beliefs, and cultural mores that could be found amongst the diverse African American population that came together in the region. Yet the very strength of Hodges' book is also its main weakness. The vast array of stories that make up the bulk of the book tend to obscure Hodges' main arguments and mar the flow of the principal story and make it less useful than it might have been, particularly for an undergraduate or more general audience. As Hodges himself confesses, the original draft of the book was almost one thousand pages long. Though some rich and intimate portraits emerge from that research, the book suffers from some rather choppy editing, and, particularly for the earlier years, the evidence is more anecdotal, sometimes contradictory, and certainly less convincing than later parts. Yet even here Hodges' primary argument - that religion is the 'principal means for understanding' the conflict over liberty and freedom between blacks and whites and indeed, 'black identity' - fails to persuade. Hodges does indeed take great pains to explore the meaning and power of religious life amongst both free and enslaved African Americans. He also in every chapter examines the positions of the diverse churches of the region, both black and white, on slavery and abolition, and he meticulously documents the many African Americans who, through voluntary societies or churches, helped crusade for the end of slavery for all, in both the northern, but especially the southern colonies in the antebellum period. But while Hodges' claims that slaves' religious beliefs were at the heart of the struggle against slavery, and, after the Revolution, that an African American theological leadership 'formed the bedrock for a nascent black nationalism' are compelling, they are not convincing - at least not on the basis of the selected evidence presented here. Sustained analysis too often gives way to the stories that Hodges is eager to tell. This is less a criticism of the book than of the claims the author makes for it. I would have also liked to seen more coverage of Dutch colonial and settler relations with slaves and free blacks, which is less than comprehensive. This is unfortunate given that Hodges statistics indicate that it was Dutch farmers who more often than not retained their slaves throughout the long era of emancipation. Indeed, it seems that a rich opportunity for a comparative view of race relations between ethnic groups has been missed.
This also points to a broader problem - that of trying to write a comprehensive history of at least two rather different groups: rural and urban African Americans. Though Hodges goes to great lengths to tie these stories together, it is the differences of experiences between these two groups rather than their similarities that warrant greater emphasis. The vibrancy of African American life in New York City that Hodges documents, for example, stands in marked contrast to the experience of rural African Americans. The gulf may have warranted a separate treatment altogether. However, Hodges has certainly done enough in this one book to lay these quibbles aside. Indeed, it is in the nature of such an ambitious work such as Root & Branch that it will inevitably not please everyone all of the time. Though there are few interpretive surprises in this book, there is an immense amount of rich and interesting material that certainly makes for compelling reading. Hodges' broad survey will make a welcome addition to the growing literature of the study of the African American experience over time, and it should help us to rethink the traditional break between northern "free" states and southern slave societies.