Article on Testamentary Manumission in New Jersey

Stuart Gold, (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) recently published an article entitled, The ‘Gift’ of Liberty: Testamentary Manumission in New Jersey – 1791-1805, Rutgers Race and the Law Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2014. Provided below is the abstract from SSRN:

This paper explores the process of manumission by will in Early Republic New Jersey between 1791 and 1805. The paper reviews the legal mechanisms available for manumission in New Jersey during this period, and places New Jersey’s manumission process in context with its sister states of New York and Pennsylvania. The primary focus of the paper is a detailed analysis of the various schemes of manumission employed by testators, as well as geographical and gender differences in detecting patterns for manumission.