Men Were the Face of Slavery in the Rural Regions Outside the City
Most enslaved Black people — like most residents of New York state — lived outside New York City and worked as agricultural laborers. Farmers in the richest agricultural regions of New York’s hinterland — the Hudson Valley, Long Island and northern New Jersey — were equally dependent on enslaved labor. There, the face of slavery was male and often African, and women were in short supply.
Owners Discouraged Families Among Their Enslaved
The sexual imbalance in both city and countryside played havoc with Black family life. The multigenerational families established by Atlantic Creoles during the 17th century withered under British rule. Men and women had difficulty finding mates. If they did, they rarely lived together as husband and wife in the same household. The cramped quarters in which urban whites resided gave slave owners little incentive to encourage family formation among their enslaved. Many actively discouraged it, and masters regularly sold enslaved women at the first sign of pregnancy. The inability of New York enslaved Blacks to reproduce themselves made New York increasingly dependent upon the slave trade, which, in turn, enlarged the proportion of New York enslaved people who had been born in Africa and increased the mortality rates of the enslaved population. The vicious cycle made New York into a death factory for Black people.
