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 inhabitants of the Raritan Valley from British foraging parties General Benjamin Lincoln with 500 men was by Washington’s orders stationed at Bound Brook, but on the 13th of April 1777 Lincoln was surprised by a force of about 4000 men under Cornwallis, and although he escaped with small loss it was only by remarkably rapid movements. When the British had gained possession of Philadelphia, in September 1777, their communication between that city and the ocean through the Lower Delaware was obstructed on the New Jersey side by Fort Mercer, commanded by Colonel Christopher Greene, at Red Bank; three battalions of Hessians under Colonel Karl Emil Kurt von Donop attacked the fort on the 22nd of October, but they were repulsed with heavy loss. The fort was abandoned later, however. As the British army under General Clinton was retreating, in June 1778, from Philadelphia to New York, the American army engaged it in the battle of Monmouth (June 28, 1778); the result was indecisive, but that the British were not badly defeated was ascribed to the conduct of General Charles Lee. Before daylight on the 19th of August 1779 was approaching, Major Henry Lee with a force of about 400 men surprised the British garrison at Paulus Hook, where Jersey City now stands, and, although sustaining a loss of 20 men, killed 50 of the garrison and took about 160 prisoners. In 1779–1780 Morristown was again Washington’s headquarters. The Congress of the Confederation met in Princeton, in Nassau Hall, which still stands, from June to November 1783.

After the war New Jersey found its commercial existence threatened by New York and Philadelphia, and it was a feeling of weakness from this cause rather than any lack of state pride that caused the state to join in the movements for a closer Federal Union. In 1786 New Jersey sent delegates to the Annapolis Convention, which was the forerunner of the Federal Convention at Philadelphia in the following year. In the latter body, on the 15th of June, one of the New Jersey delegates, William Paterson (1745–1806), presented what was called the “New Jersey plan” of union, representing the wishes of the smaller states, which objected to representation in a national Congress being based on wealth or on population. This merely federal plan, reported from a Conference attended by the delegates from Connecticut, New York and Delaware, as well as those from New Jersey (and by Luther Martin of Maryland), consisted of nine resolutions; the first was that “the Articles of Confederation ought to be so revised, corrected and enlarged as to render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union”; and the actual “plan” was for a single legislative body, in which each state should be represented by one member, and which should elect the supreme court and have power to remove the executive (a Council), to lay taxes and import duties, to control commerce, and even, if necessary, to make requisitions for funds from the states. Madison opposed the plan, on the ground that it would not prevent violations by the states of treaties and of laws of nations. On the first resolution only there was a definite vote; on the 19th of June it was voted to postpone the consideration of this resolution and to report the resolutions (the Virginia plan) formerly agreed upon by the committee of the whole. The New Jersey plan left its impress in the provision of the Constitution (approved in the Convention on the 7th of July) for equal representation in the national Senate. The Federal Constitution was ratified by a unanimous vote in the state convention which met at Trenton on the 18th of December 1787.

The state’s own constitution, which had been adopted in 1776 and amended in 1777, retained, like other state constitutions framed during the War of Independence, many features of colonial government ill-adapted to a state increasingly democratic. The basis of representation, each county electing three members to the assembly and one member to the legislative council, soon became antiquated. The property qualifications were, for members of the council, “one thousand pounds proclamation money, of real and personal estate, in the same county,” and, for members of the assembly, “five hundred pounds proclamation money, in real and personal estate, in the same county.” These and the property qualifications for suffrage, which was granted to “all inhabitants of this state, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate in the same,” &c., were soon considered undemocratic; and the democratic tendency of certain election officers may be seen from their construing the words “all inhabitants of full age” to include women, and from their permitting women to vote. The governor was chosen by the joint vote of the council and assembly; he was president of the council, with a casting vote; he was chancellor, captain-general and commander-in-chief of the militia; he had three members of the legislature to act as a privy-council; and he, with the council (of which seven formed a quorum), constituted “the Court of Appeals in the last resort in all causes of law, as heretofore,” which, in addition, had “the power of granting pardons to criminals, after condemnation, in all cases of treason, felony or other offences.”

Agitation for constitutional reform resulted in a constitutional convention, which met at Trenton from the 14th of May to the 29th of June 1844 and drafted a new frame of government, introducing a number of radical changes. This instrument was ratified at the polls on the 13th of August. The election of the governor was taken from the legislature and given to the people; the powers of government were distributed among legislative, executive and judicial departments; representation in the assembly was based on population; and the property qualification for membership in the legislature and for the suffrage was abolished.

The constitution of 1844 declared that “All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain unalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty and of pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.” A similar clause in the constitution of Massachusetts had been interpreted by the courts as an abolition of slavery, and an effort was made to have the same ruling applied in New Jersey, where the institution of slavery still existed. The courts, however, declared that the clause in the constitution of New Jersey was a “general proposition,” not applying “to man in his private, industrial or domestic capacity.” An attempt at abolition had previously been made in 1804 by an act declaring that every child born of a slave should be free, but should remain the servant of its mother’s owner until twenty-five years of age if a male or twenty-one years of age if a female. The owner of the mother, however, might abandon the child after a year, and it then became a public charge. This last provision produced such a heavy drain on the treasury for the support of abandoned negro children that in 1811 the statute was repealed. In 1846 an act was passed designating slaves as apprentices bound to service until discharged by their owners, and providing that children of