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An Amendment, created to explain and to close loopholes in the 1780 Act, was passed in the Pennsylvania legislature on March 29, 1788. The Amendment prohibited Pennsylvanians from transporting pregnant enslaved women out-of-state so that their children would be born enslaved, and also prohibited Pennsylvanians from separating enslaved husbands from wives and enslaved children from parents.
During the American Revolutionary War, Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition Act (1780), the first such law in the new United States. Pennsylvania law freed those children born to enslaved mothers after that date. They had to serve lengthy indentured servitude until age 28 before becoming free as adults.
Pennsylvania's An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery of 1780 was the first legislative enactment in the United States. [4] It specified that Every Negro and Mulatto child born within the State after the passing of the Act (1780) would be free upon reaching age twenty-eight." [4]
In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a law that provided for the gradual abolition of slavery, making Pennsylvania the first state to pass an act to abolish slavery, although Vermont (not yet a state) had also previously abolished slavery. [32]
On March 29, 1788, the State of Pennsylvania passed an amendment to one of its laws (An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, originally enacted March 1, 1780): "No negro or mulatto slave... shall be removed out of this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed."
An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery (1780) The Captivity of Benjamin Gilbert and His Family, 1780-83 - a captivity narrative by William Walton relating the experiences of a Quaker family of settlers near Mauch Chunk in present-day Carbon County, Pennsylvania. (1784)
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With the 1780 Gradual Abolition Act, Pennsylvania became the first state to establish a process to emancipate slaves. However, no one was freed immediately. However, no one was freed immediately. The process was to play out over decades and not end until the death of the last person enslaved in Pennsylvania.