Introduction

On November 6, 1802, the Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, a local Philadelphian newspaper, published an editorial, “Melancholy Effects of Slavery,” that accused James Ewing, Trenton’s mayor, of having ordered several blacks, including one Romaine, along with his wife and his child, all of whom belonged to a French planter, to leave New Jersey and return to St. Domingo where they had lived as slaves. After boarding a Trenton stagecoach, the blacks and their owners rode to Philadelphia where they stopped to eat. Somehow, Romaine’s wife and child slipped away, but before Romaine could escape, the planter’s escorts ordered him into the stagecoach. Romaine “walked a few steps, and with a pruning knife, which seemed,” wrote the editor, “prepared for the purpose, cut his throat in so shocking manner that he expired in a few minutes after on the pavement.” ¹