The Case of Caesar Tite and Other Litigation over Freedmen

The Revolutionary War and establishment of a new government led to many novel circumstances that the new nation’s immature laws and legal institutions had to learn to adjudicate. A number of the thorniest individual circumstances involved slaves and former slaves. Prior articles provide glimpses of the complex circumstances surrounding the abolitionism of Shrewsbury’s Quakers and Black men who became Loyalists to win their freedom. But few of these circumstances were well enough documented to serve as the basis for an article in this compendium. The case of Caeser Tite, however, is well documented.

The Case of Caesar Tite

Caesar Tite was a slave to the Tite family of Freehold Township. Grace Tite, his owner under New Jersey law, composed a will that promised freedom to Caesar upon his turning 21. Before turning 21, Grace Tite died and Caesar came under the supervision of Thomas Leonard, the former county sheriff. When the Revolution began, Leonard and his wife, Mary Leonard, became Loyalists—Thomas Leonard would soon be commissioned a major in the Loyalist New Jersey Volunteers. 

Caesar Tite was seized with Leonard’s other assets and sold at public auction in 1779. The purchaser on Leonard’s estate, Colonel David Forman, then sold Tite to his friend Kenneth Hankinson, who sold him to Lewis McKnight.

McKnight was a yeoman farmer. He served as a Lieutenant in the militia and served on local juries. He is not listed as owning slaves in the 1779 tax lists. The purchase of an able bodied young adult slave was likely among McKnight’s most significant purchases. McKnight owned Tite on his 21st birthday. He refused to free him, claiming to know nothing of Tite’s promise of freedom.

The case of The State v. Lewis McKnight was filed before the New Jersey Supreme Court on May 22, 1782—Caesar Tite was 23 at the time. On September 1, the New Jersey Supreme Court was ready to hear the case. It summoned McKnight to respond to charges that he was illegally detaining Tite, "a free Negro in your custody." McKnight submitted the following statement in his defense:

Agreeable to the command of the written order, I have herein written to the court on the writ mentioned, Caesar Tite, and do say that this sd. Negro is my property, being bought of Kenneth Hankinson for valuable considerations, and he is not a free man, but I am willing and desirous to contest this property before a jury of this county, agreeable to the laws of the State and pray that he may not be taken from me without a trial by jury.

It is interesting that McKnight wished for a jury trial in Monmouth County rather than a hearing before the Supreme Court’s justices. McKnight likely assumed that a local jury of his peers would be sympathetic to his plight as a man who purchased a slave without knowledge that the slave would be a free man imminently. The jury would also likely know of the long list of scandalous and unethical practices associated with Forman and Hankinson. A local jury might see McKnight as a victim.

The case was argued in September. Tite produced documents proving the promise of freedom on his 21st birthday. The Supreme Court, presided over by Chief Justice David Brearley of Upper Freehold, unanimously ruled that “the said Manumission is good in Law against all Persons claiming” a property right to Caesar Tite. It ordered Tite to be “discharged and set at Liberty from the said Lewis McKnight.” McKnight received no compensation. Tite was now 24; he was not compensated for his three extra years in bondage.

Other Cases

Beyond the case of Caesar Tite, there were five other New Jersey Supreme Court cases involving slavery and Monmouth County in the years following the Revolutionary War. Several earned their freedom.

Luke, July 1783: A Negro man named Luke was taken "by the refugees" from his home in Maryland and carried to New York. Luke was “there put on board the King's gallies" which “he escaped from with a white man.” Luke was picked up by Adoniah Francis at Allentown who “brought the said Negro to Allentown in Monmouth County.” The case went before the New Jersey Supreme Court, presumably to determine if Luke would be returned to slavery in Maryland. The fate of Luke is unknown.

Betty, April 1784: Arthur Barkalow was charged with murdering the "negro wench" named Betty based on evidence gathered by James Cox, the coroner for Upper Freehold Township. The case was tried before the New Jersey Supreme Court. Key statements are below:

Derrick Barkalow testified: “Betty was the wench of Arthur Barkalow… hearing a noise, [Derrick] went out and saw sd. Arthur beating said wench with a small whip, he asked the said Arthur what he whipt her for and he answered she would not go home when he bid her."

Lewis Garrison testified to seeing Betty's dead body. He further testified that “he saw the arm bloody and appeared to be cut by a whip."

John Warrick testified that he saw Arthur Barkalow "bid her to go home which she refused, whereupon he gave her some stripes and she went home"... Warrick went to Arthur Barkalow's house, where he "found him beating her... one blow with broomstick on her head as she was sitting on a chair... Some short time after, Derrick Barkalow came out of the house saying she was dead."

The verdict is unknown.

Prime, 1786: In 1786, the New Jersey legislature received a petition from a former slave, Prime. Before the war, Prime was slave to Dr. Absalom Bainbridge of Trenton, a Loyalist whose wife moved to Middletown in early 1777. In December 1776, Bainbridge fled to Staten Island and Prime was sold by Mrs. Bainbridge to her father, John Taylor of Middletown (a Loyalist elder who stayed in Middletown). Taylor later asserted that the purchase was conducted "under a license from General [Israel] Putnam," but Prime escaped and joined the Continental Army. After the war, Prime resettled in Trenton as a laborer. In June 1784, Taylor hired John Van Horn to take Prime and return him to Middletown as a slave. Prime's case attracted the attention of Moore Furman, a prominent Quaker, who unsuccessfully tried to win his freedom through the courts. In 1786, the New Jersey Legislature heard Prime’s petition and freed him based on his Continental Army service.

Jack, May 1790: In May 1790, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in the case of State vs. Tobias Hendrickson, "on habeus corpus of the Negro, Jack, on claiming his freedom." The verdict read:

The court, having considered this case under all of its circumstances, and it appearing that John Coward, the former master, under whom Tobias Hendrickson makes claim to the negro, antecedent to the year 1785 actually entered into an agreement with Jack for his freedom, the terms of which have been fully complied with; The court is therefore of the opinion and do order that the said Jack is to be liberated from the custody of the said Tobias Hendrickson.

While the exact circumstances that led Jack’s freedom are not revealed, the Supreme Court instructed Hendrickson that he could make a claim against Coward, who defied a summons to appear in court. This suggests that Hendrickson may have been deceived regarding Jack’s status when he purchased Jack from Coward.

Cornelius Wilson and Hagar Wilson, September 1791: In 1791, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard the case of The State vs. Abraham Probasco. The State of New Jersey, on behalf of the children of Cornelius Wilson and Hagar Wilson, sued Abraham Probasco for the children's freedom. In 1776, General William Winds of Morris County freed the slave family of Cornelius and Hagar Wilson, with their children. However, in 1779, with their parents sick, the children went to work for Abraham Probasco on a five-year indenture, with Winds posting a £5-per-child bond to complete their indenture. Winds and Probasco argued over conditions of the indenture and Probasco kept the children after the indenture expired. The court determined that because the children completed their indenture, the dispute between Probasco and Winds was irrelevant to the status of the children. The Court freed the children (but only after they spent twelve years under Probasco, rather than the required five).

Perspective

Led by a Quaker community committed to ending slavery, many Monmouth Countians, including some non-Quakers, freed slaves during and immediately after the war. New Jersey banned the importation of slaves in 1786. Nonetheless, New Jersey was the last northern state to abolish slavery (slavery was gradually abolished per an 1804 law), and Monmouth County was among the counties with the most slaves. This meant that Monmouth County had a few hundred slaves even a decade after the Revolutionary War ended. The New Jersey Supreme Court, under Upper Freehold’s David Brearley, was generally sympathetic to slaves seeking freedom and freed Monmouth County slaves when they had credible legal arguments for emancipation.

However, the gross injustice of slavery was not easily wiped away—even after a slave earned her or his freedom. Black families were nearly always poor and dozens of Black Monmouth County families split during the Revolutionary War between those who stayed home and those who turned Loyalist on British promises of freedom. Dozens of Monmouth County African Americans resettled in Canada after the war. Only scattered documentation exists about the Black communities of Monmouth County during the Revolutionary period—and the under-representation of the unique difficulties experienced by those communities is among the most substantial shortcomings in the surviving historical record.

Related Historic Site: National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington, DC)

Sources: T.H. Pyle, David Brearley: America’s Most Important Forgotten Founding Father, unpublished manuscript in the possession of the Allentown Historical Society); University of Virginia, Rare Books: New Jersey Society Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, pp. 59-76, 257; The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, September 20, 1779, p 167; Supreme Court summons, New Jersey State Archives, NJ Supreme Court Collection, Case # 28002; Pennsylvania Gazette, August 21, 1782; University of Virginia, Rare Books: New Jersey Society Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, pp. 59-76, 257; Independent Gazetteer, August 9, 1783; New Jersey State Archives, Supreme Court Records, #34201; Fishman, George: Taking a Stand for Freedom in Revolutionary New Jersey: Prime's Petition of 1786 (Science & Society; Vol. 56, No. 3, Fall, 1992); Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of New Jersey Relative to the Manumission of Negroes (Burlington: New Jersey Society for the Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1794), 24.

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