New Jersey Colony Quotes

The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, better known as the American Colonization Society was a group established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey which supported the migration of free African Americans to the continent of Africa In 1822, the American Colonization Society established a new colony on the West Coast of Africa that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, the American Colonization Society had sent more than 13,000 black emigrants to this new country. Beginning in the 1830’s the society was harshly attacked by abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a scheme perpetrated by the slaveholder’s to rid themselves of any responsibility regarding the freeing of their former slaves. Of course this was true prior to the Civil War and laterr during the “Jim Crow” era! The concept had a sizable following of, southern whites, who thought of this as a way to rid America of a growing black population. Others felt that since the slaves were brought to America against their will that it was only right that they be returned to Africa. Paul Cuffee and other free Blacks petitioned the Massachusetts government to either give African and Native Americans the right to vote or to stop taxing them. Cuffee also advocated the return to Africa of freed slaves. Some years later, after the Civil War, many freed blacks actually wanted to go to the new country of Liberia to make a better life for themselves, however the money necessary to send them back, as could be expected, dried up. The entire program came to an end during the latter part of the 19th century when the American Colonization Society stopped transporting former slaves to West Africa and concentrated instead on educational and missionary efforts. Those blacks that did come from the United States and populated Liberia became known as the Americo-Liberians who soon become the ruling class of Liberia.

As New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Carolina looked to attract settlers, their proprietors focused on two sets of incentives: religious indifference and generous land grants. The land granted had a quasi tax placed on it, known as a quitrent. For the proprietors of vast lands, receiving the income of the quitrents, along with making the remaining land more valuable as it became populated, was the basic business model. As it turned out, the least religiously tolerant and theologically most uniform place in English America was New England; rules of Sabbath and observation were codified in most local laws. Everyone else was primarily interested in the pursuit of money, and if that meant tolerance, so be it. The Lords Proprietors of Carolina offered an especially unique incentive. For every family member brought over, the family was granted 150 acres. But the definition of family was a generous and loose one. Looking to populate Carolina from the English holdings in the Caribbean, the Lords Proprietors counted all Africans as members of their owner’s family, entitling the owner to an additional 150 acres for each slave. By 1720 this catalyzing structure led to people of African descent becoming the majority of the colony—a condition that would hold for generations.

Every other Massachusetts town founded before 1660 was named after an English community. Of thirty-five such names, at least eighteen (57%) were drawn from East Anglia and twenty-two (63%) from seven eastern counties. Most were named after English towns within sixty miles of the village of Haverhill.2 As the Puritans moved beyond the borders of New England to other colonies, their place names continued to come from the east of England. When they settled Long Island, they named their county Suffolk. In the Connecticut Valley, their first county was called Hartford. When they founded a colony in New Jersey, the most important town was called the New Ark of the Covenant (now the modern city of Newark) and the county was named Essex. In general, the proportion of eastern and East Anglian place names in Massachusetts and its affiliated colonies was 60 percent—exactly the same as in genealogies and ship lists.

Through a diversity of Bible-based beliefs, Colonial America firmly founded its culture, laws, and government on the Judeo-Christian worldview. That common faith was clearly expressed in the founding documents of all thirteen American colonies: The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter recorded an intent to spread the “knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind, and the Christian faith,” much as the Mayflower Compact cited a commitment to “the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian faith.” Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders officially called for “an orderly and decent Government established according to God” that would “maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.” In New Hampshire, the Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter vowed to establish a government “in the name of Christ” that “shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the Will of God.” Rhode Island’s colonial charter invoked the “blessing of God” for “a sure foundation of happiness to all America.” The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England stated, “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel …” New York’s Duke’s Laws prohibited denial of “the true God and his Attributes.” New Jersey’s founding charter vowed, “Forasmuch as it has pleased God, to bring us into this Province…we may be a people to the praise and honor of his name.” Delaware’s original charter officially acknowledged “One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World.” Pennsylvania’s charter officially cited a “Love of Civil Society and Christian Religion” as motivation for the colony’s founding. Maryland’s charter declared an official goal of “extending the Christian Religion.” Virginia’s first charter commissioned colonization as “so noble a work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the…propagating of Christian Religion.” The charter for the Colony of Carolina proclaimed “a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith.” Georgia’s charter officially cited a commitment to the “propagating of Christian religion.”27

FOR A WHILE, the American colonists pursued their own salt making with characteristic self-reliance, producing a significant amount. But the securing of these colonies by the British had coincided with the discovery of rock salt in Cheshire and its increased production. In time, the British made Liverpool salt cheaper and more accessible than local salt, and domestic American production dropped off. This was exactly the way colonialism was supposed to work. While relations were intact with England, the colonists had enough salt for their domestic needs, but the salt supply was inhibiting their foreign trade. Of course, they were not supposed to be engaging in foreign trade. They were supposed to buy everything from England and sell everything to England. But the American colonists produced more, especially more salt cod, than the British could sell. As long as the Americans were making their products with British salt, the British were happy to let them overproduce. But the British often failed to supply enough salt for American needs. In 1688, Daniel Coxe wrote about New Jersey that fish were abundant but the colony was unable to establish a successful fishery because of a “want of salt.” The New Jersey colony sent to France for experts—“diverse Frenchmen skillful in making salt by the sun.” This was not how colonialism was supposed to work.

So insignificant were the towns, that in earl times legislation was necessary to compel them to have "ordinaries" for passing strangers. Some of the houses in the New Jersey villages were of wood, but brick was the most usual material.

While he thus gained general hatred, he also won universal contempt by his debaucheries and excesses, by his debts, and by his habit of dressing as a woman. He was plunged in one long quarrel with his Assemblies, both in New York and New Jersey, plotted with Dudley, of Massachusetts, to destroy the free - charter governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and at last excited such loud and strenuous opposition that he was recalled, but could not return to England until his accession to the Earldom of Clarendon released him from prison, into which he had been thrown for debt.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t take the English long to make changes; 2 days after Stuyvesant's surrender, New Amsterdam was once again blessed with a new name. This massive territory was now to be called “New York.” The now crown-owned region traced its borders around present-day New Jersey, Delaware, Vermont, and included portions of Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The name paid homage to James II, the Duke of York and soon-to-be King of England.

Not all the colonies, it should be said, succumbed; Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland exercised admirable restraint. And there is indication that the paper money, sustaining, as it did, prices and trade, contributed to general economic well-being where it was so used. This was certainly the view of Benjamin Franklin, who could have been influenced by being in business himself as a printer of the notes. Eventually, in 1751, the Parliament in London forbade the paper issues in New England and, a little later, elsewhere in the colonies. There was sharp anger over this action; paper and its associated leverage remained strongly in the minds of the American colonists as an economic good. Nor should the use of paper be wholly condemned, although many historians have done so. Washington’s soldiers were paid in Continental notes; by these the Revolution was financed. Tax receipts were then negligible, as was the machinery for tax collection. The cost of the war was thus borne by those who, receiving the so-called Continentals, found their buying power quickly and irrevocably diminishing. Thus was American independence purchased, and it is not clear that it could have been bought in any other way. The stage was now set for recurrent speculative episodes in the new republic.