In the years following the American Revolution, some northeastern states passed gradual abolition laws to slowly eliminate slavery within their borders. While the exact factors that contributed to the creation of gradual abolition regimes varied in each state, the resulting legislation reflected the Revolution's ideological currents, especially freedom and property rights. Crafted to strike some balance between individual freedom and property, gradual abolition laws were complex pieces of legislation. This complexity prompted new struggles and negotiations between slaveholders, enslaved people, free African Americans, and abolitionists. These contests occurred in private homes, streets, and courtrooms, and ultimately informed debates about race and freedom in legislative halls. This module highlights one of these confrontations, focusing on a lawsuit to reestablish the freedom of an African American teenager from New York City named John Johnson. After being illegally sold into slavery in Louisiana in 1816, Johnson and his lawyers appealed to New York's 1799 gradual abolition law to restore his freedom. Johnson's experience demonstrates the new opportunities and distinct challenges that gradual abolition laws created for African Americans.
In April 1816, John Johnson's next friend, or legal representative, N. Wheeler, and his attorneys filed a petition in the First Judicial District Court based in New Orleans, Louisiana. According to the petition, a woman named Celestine Trudeau had illegally sold Johnson into slavery. At the time the petition was filed, a man named Sosthene Allain allegedly "held and treated [Johnson] as a slave in the most cruel manner" on his sugar plantation. Johnson and his allies asked the court to "decree to [Johnson] his freedom and compell [sic] the said [Allain] to pay such wages . . . as his labor has been worth."
Johnson and his allies made a two-part argument for Johnson's freedom. First, they maintained that Johnson was free because both of his parents were free people. Second, they argued that even if Johnson had been born enslaved, he should be entitled to his freedom in 1816 because New York's amended gradual abolition law freed any slave or servant that was removed from the state to be sold as a slave. This second argument invoked New York's gradual abolition laws and was crucial for establishing Johnson's free status in Louisiana.
New York began the gradual abolition process when it passed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery on March 28, 1799. The state's abolition law orchestrated the slow demise of slavery within its jurisdiction by establishing that any child born to an enslaved woman after July 4, 1799, would be born free, though they would serve as an indentured servant for their mother's enslaver until their 28th birthday if the child was a boy or their 25th birthday if the child was a girl. New York legislators passed several more amendments to this act, including the 1813 act that Johnson's lawyers referenced in his freedom suit. Notably, an 1810 act required that free-born children of enslaved mothers be taught how to read. If they were not given this instruction, the children could be released from their service early. Additionally, an 1801 amendment of the initial gradual abolition act prohibited people from taking slaves or servants out of the state in order to sell them into slavery.
In New York and elsewhere, gradual abolition laws targeted one of the main legal principles that undergirded slavery in the Americas. This legal doctrine was partus sequitur ventrem. Often translated to English as "the child follows the womb," this doctrine ensured that enslaved women gave birth to enslaved children. Shaped by this legal principle then, the system of slavery that was practiced in European colonies across the Americas and eventually in the United States effectively guaranteed that slave status would be life-long and inheritable across multiple generations. Gradual abolition laws in the United States eliminated the inheritance of slave status, but most gradual abolition laws did not emancipate any enslaved people who were alive when the legislation was enacted (and even some people who were not yet born). Rather, the legislation dramatically decreased the number of people in the state born enslaved, thereby decreasing the number of enslaved people over generations. New York sped up their process with an 1817 amendment to New York's gradual abolition law that set July 4, 1827, as the date of emancipation for enslaved people in the state who had been born before July 4, 1799. This group of people had not been addressed in the initial legislation, which only applied to children born after July 4, 1799.
Johnson arrived in New Orleans in 1816 to work as a personal waiter or servant for Celestine Trudeau and her sister. The existing court records do not provide Johnson's rationale for taking this job, but the musings of an African American servant based in Boston named Robert Roberts can help us imagine what Johnson's own motivations could have been. In the 1828 guide that Roberts authored, he summarized the pros and cons of working as a servant. He wrote that the position "comprises comforts, privileges, and pleasures, which are to be found in but few other stations in which you may enter; and on the other hand many difficulties, trials of temper, &c. more perhaps than in any other station in which you might enter, in a different state of life."1 Working as a servant for a well-to-do family—even if this family was based in the South—could have provided young Johnson with such "comforts" as steady employment, housing, and the opportunity to travel to new places.
Unfortunately, this was not Johnson's experience working for Trudeau. Shortly after Johnson arrived in New Orleans, Trudeau sold the teenager to Sosthene Allain on February 7, 1816. The petition even mentioned that this transaction was written down and formalized with a notarized bill of sale. The bill of sale was an important legal instrument that gave this illegal transaction a facade of legality. The ostensible lawfulness of the transaction need not be understood as evidence of Trudeau's genuine belief that Johnson was a slave who could be sold. Kidnapping or inveigling free African Americans from New York was not just done by "outlaws" or people unaware of the state's gradual abolition laws. For instance, a group of New York City's African American residents who organized to prevent kidnappings and support fugitives from slavery arriving in their city noted that judges participated in these kidnappings. Writing in 1837, over two decades after Johnson's experience, the New York Vigilance Committee's members understood existing laws and lawmakers to be ineffective at protecting enslaved and free African Americans from being forced into slavery.2
Fortunately for Johnson, the gradual abolition law proved useful enough to rescue him from slavery and reestablish his free status. Louisiana First District Court's Judge Joshua Lewis ultimately concluded that Johnson had been born in New York City after July 4, 1799, and brought to New Orleans to be sold into slavery. Because of these facts, Judge Lewis determined that Johnson "is by an act of the Legislature of New York passed the 9th of April 1813 entitled to his freedom." New York's gradual abolition laws benefited Johnson because of his race and age.
Notably, the judge granted Johnson his freedom but not the wages he also asked for in his petition. While Johnson was certainly happy to be restored to freedom, receiving the wages he believed he was owed for his labor could have improved Johnson's experience of freedom after the suit. Johnson incurred monetary debts while he fought for his freedom. An indenture record from August 12, 1817, reveals that Johnson borrowed $150 from "his next friend" N. Wheeler while "obtaining his freedom," suggesting that Wheeler had financial interest in Johnson's freedom. In exchange for the $150 loan, Johnson agreed to serve as Wheeler's indentured servant for the next four years. According to the contract, Johnson would serve Wheeler "honestly and obediently in all things as a good servant ought to do," and in return, Wheeler would provide Johnson with meat, drink, clothes, housing, and medicine.
The historical record of Johnson's legal struggle for his freedom ends with this indenture contract. John Johnson's simultaneous experience of legal freedom, debt, and indenture was an experience shared by other people of African descent across the Americas who negotiated with enslavers to purchase their freedom. What do Johnson and other African-descended people's experiences of indebtedness and indentured servitude after obtaining legal free status reveal about free African Americans' experiences of race, law, and freedom in the early 1800s?
Suggested Readings
Gellman, David N. Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777–1827. Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
Gronningsater, Sarah L. H. The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024.
Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Olsavsky, Jesse. The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861. Louisiana State University Press, 2022.
Webster, Crystal Lynn. Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North. University of North Carolina Press, 2021.
White, Shane. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810. University of Georgia Press, 1991.
1. Robert Roberts, The House Servant's Directory: Or, A Monitor for Private Families (Boston and New York, 1828), https://www.loc.gov/item/07028299/.
2. The First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance for the Year 1837: Together with Important Facts Relative to their Proceedings (New York, 1837), Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, Cornell University Library Digital Collections, https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/may839002.
John Johnson v. Sosthene Allain