But the institution of slavery was still legal in New Jersey longer than it was in the South.
Seems to me if they thought it was so bad, they wouldn't have waited until they were forced to abolish it. Why didn't they abolish it in 1861? Wasn't that when the war started?
Four more years of Slavery in New Jersey makes you think they didn't really give a rat's @$$ about slavery as an issue.
No, you are confusing New Jersey with states like Delaware -- slave states which remained loyal to the Union, and so were unaffected by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Delaware, for example, did not officially abolish slavery until required by the 13th Amendment.
Of course, Delaware had relatively few slaves to begin with, and far more freed- blacks.
New Jersey began gradual abolition in 1804 when it had about 12,000 slaves.
By 1860 only 18 of those slaves remained alive, and were freed by the 13th Amendment in 1865.
For comparison, Georgia's slave population grew from 60,000 in 1800 to 462,000 in 1860.
DiogenesLamp: "Seems to me if they thought it was so bad, they wouldn't have waited until they were forced to abolish it.
Why didn't they abolish it in 1861? Wasn't that when the war started?"
Of the Northern states, by 1860 only New Jersey still had a handful of old slaves still living -- 18 according to census.
So slavery was effectively abolished.
But in 1860 almost every Northerner understood that slavery in the South was a precondition for Union, and so did not wish to impose abolition on those states.
At the same time, slavery was arguably a dying institution in such Border States as Delaware, Maryland and even Missouri.
Many Northerners would have welcomed those states' votes to abolish slavery, but none would have insisted on it, if that meant disunion.
DiogenesLamp: "Four more years of Slavery in New Jersey makes you think they didn't really give a rat's @$$ about slavery as an issue."
I would rather suspect that the, ahem, "rat's *ss" nobody cares about are some of DiogenesLamp's more ignorant or misinformed opinions.