Pennsylvania adopts gradual abolition legislation

The colony restricted the importation of enslaved people and imposed penalties on traders, while existing slavery and Rhode Island’s participation in the Atlantic economy continued. The act came after...

The organization formed to assist free Black people illegally held in bondage and later broadened its work against slavery. Its founding preceded the Declaration of Independence and shows abolitionist...

During the American Revolution, Virginia’s royal governor offered freedom to enslaved people belonging to rebels who joined British forces. The offer was a military strategy, not a principled...

The Declaration announced that “all men are created equal” while its authors and the new republic remained entangled in slavery. The contradiction was challenged by Black writers, petitioners,...

Vermont adopted a constitution prohibiting adult slavery, an unusually early formal restriction in the region. The provision did not resolve all forms of coerced labor or guarantee equal civic...

A law passed in May 1782 allowed enslavers to free people by deed or will without prior legislative approval. Manumission expanded, but it remained dependent on enslavers’ decisions, often imposed...

In the Walker litigation, the state’s constitutional language of equality was applied against slavery. The decisions helped end slavery in Massachusetts through litigation and resistance by Quock...

The act declared children born to enslaved women after its passage free, while placing them in long-term service and leaving people already enslaved in bondage. It was gradual and conditional...

Formerly enslaved Black people from London arrived to establish Granville Town near present-day Freetown. Their settlement aspirations met difficult conditions and British imperial oversight, and...

A small group of activists founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Its campaign used petitions, testimony, publications, and consumer organizing, and relied heavily on...