As two centuries of slavery slowly ended in New York State in the first three decades of the 1800s, the lives of formerly enslaved black men, women and children changed drastically. Some, like Williams, fared better than others. Several became landowners. Many freed slaves came together to form communities and to found black churches. Many others, however, became outcasts, gathering in bleak shantytown poverty, depending on charity to survive.
Whites, too, were adjusting to a new reality. While the majority of whites supported emancipation of blacks from slavery, many had reservations about former slaves participating fully in white society. Northern states began passing laws that restricted free blacks, especially in politics. "Everywhere in the North the condition of the free Negro worsened as slavery passed from the scene," writes Edgar J. McManus in "A History of Negro Slavery in New York." (McManus 43-56) Former slaves were now citizens, and, for the adult males, at least, they had the potential to become voters.
In New York, the Democratic-Republicans (the forerunner of today's Democratic Party) in power did not have the support of free black voters. The result was a series of voting restrictions on free blacks that culminated in changes in the state Constitution at the 1821 constitutional convention.
The law that freed all slaves as of 1827 perpetuated one great affront against black children. Although the children of slaves born on or after July 4, 1799, were legally free, the new law continued to require them to serve their mother's owner as indentured servants. This meant that although slavery was banned after 1827, blacks could be kept in servitude until as late as 1848: They were never slaves, but neither were they free.
Many ex-slaves found themselves unable to do anything but stay right where they were, on white men's farms. They continued to work for their former owners, probably doing the same jobs, for minimal pay...................
