Chronicles the history of emancipation through the cradle-to-grave experiences of a remarkable generation of black northerners

The Rising Generation chronicles the long history of emancipation in the United States through the cradle-to-grave experiences of a generation of black New Yorkers. Born into precarious freedom after the American Revolution and reaching adulthood in the lead-up to the Civil War, this remarkable generation ultimately played an outsized role in political and legal conflicts over slavery’s future, influencing both the nation’s path to the Civil War and changes to the US Constitution.

Through exhaustive research in archives across New York State, where the largest enslaved population in the North resided at the time of the American Revolution, Sarah L. H. Gronningsater begins by exploring how English colonial laws shaped late eighteenth-century gradual abolition acts that freed children born to enslaved mothers. The boys and girls affected by these laws were born into a quasi-free legal status. They were technically not enslaved but were nonetheless required to labor as servants until they reached adulthood. Parents, teachers, and mentors of these “children of gradual abolition” found multiple ways to protect and nurture the boys and girls in their midst. They supported and founded schools, formed ties with white lawyers and abolitionists, petitioned local and state officials for better laws, guarded against kidnapping and cruelty, and shaped New York’s evolving identity as a free state. Black fathers used their votes during annual state elections in the early 1800s to influence legislative antislavery efforts. After many but not all black men in the state were disfranchised by a race-based property requirement in 1822, black citizens across New York organized to regain equal suffrage and to expand and protect other crucial, non-gendered features of state citizenship. Women and children were critical participants in these efforts.

Gronningsater shows how, as the children of gradual abolition reached adulthood, they took the lessons of their youth into midcentury campaigns for legal equality, political inclusion, equitable common school education, and the expansion of freedom across the nation.

"Gronningsater has seamlessly melded political, legal, and African American history with a cast of characters ranging from Frederick Douglass to Sojourner Truth, William H. Seward, Quaker philanthropists, and even obscure Black carters and washer women to produce a superb book about the consequences of the gradual abolition of slavery in New York...Based on extensive archival research combined with an awareness of the massive, relevant historiography, this is an indispensable work for US historians."—Choice

"This book is an extraordinary accomplishment of research and writing. Sarah L. H. Gronningsater has immersed herself in countless local archives to give us an entirely new picture of northern black politics in its many forms. With clarity and empathy, The Rising Generation shows how black children, women, and men developed organizing savvy and legal acumen, supported fugitive slaves, demanded access to schools and the courts, and made their voices heard in national politics."—Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

"The Rising Generation deepens our understanding of the central role of New York State in defining antislavery activism, inclusive citizenship, and racial equality in the United States. Sarah L. H. Gronningsater’s careful delineation of New York’s changing legal and political landscape over the long nineteenth century centers African American men, women, and children—80 percent of whom lived outside of New York City—whose activism inspired white activists and politicians and was central to ending slavery and demanding equal citizenship. This beautifully written, passionately argued book recovers moving examples of black people’s everyday activism that led to profound change and left impressive legacies not only in New York but throughout the nation. An inspiring, necessary book."—Leslie M. Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863

"The Rising Generation is a book about hope. Meticulously researched and beautifully crafted, it recasts the history of emancipation by foregrounding the activism of ordinary people, particularly black Americans. That past has profound resonance now. By revealing what civic engagement accomplished in the past, this remarkable book also opens up new possibilities today."—Laura F. Edwards, author of A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights

"Sarah Gronningsater brings to life a generation of New Yorkers who transformed black petitioning and advocacy and, through these instruments, law and politics in the long nineteenth century. A triumph of scholarship forged through painstaking archival work, The Rising Generation rethinks what a social movement is."—Daniel Carpenter, author of Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790–1870

The Rising Generation

Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom

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