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As a group, they were too poor to buy slaves. In the late colonial period, people found it economically viable to pay for free labor. Another factor against slavery was the rising enthusiasm of revolutionary ideals about human rights [1]: 1 Religious resistance to slavery and the slave-import taxes led the colony to ban slave imports in 1767.
1784: Connecticut begins a gradual abolition of slavery. A law was approved in 1848 that freed any remaining slaves. 1784: Rhode Island begins a gradual abolition of slavery. 1791: Vermont enters the Union as a free state. 1799: New York State begins a gradual abolition of slavery. A law was approved in 1817 that freed all remaining slaves on ...
It was reorganized in 1784 [2] as the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, [3] (better known as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society) and was incorporated in 1789. At some point after 1785, Benjamin Franklin was elected as the organization's president.
The border states of Maryland (November 1864) [16] and Missouri (January 1865), [17] and the Union-occupied Confederate state, Tennessee (January 1865), [18] all abolished slavery prior to the end of the Civil War, as did the new state of West Virginia (February 1865), [19] which had separated from Virginia in 1863 over the issue of slavery.
West Virginia did not abolish slavery in its first proposed constitution of 1861, though it did ban the importation of slaves. [40] In 1863, voters approved the Willey Amendment, which provided for gradual abolition of slavery, with the last enslaved people scheduled to be freed in 1884. [41]
Four other Northern states adopted policies to at least gradually abolish slavery: New Hampshire and Massachusetts in 1783, and Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. The Republic of Vermont had already limited slavery in its original constitution (1777), before it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791.
The legal status of slavery in New Hampshire has been described as "ambiguous," [15] and abolition legislation was minimal or non-existent. [16] New Hampshire never passed a state law abolishing slavery. [17] That said, New Hampshire was a free state with no slavery to speak of from the American Revolution forward. [9] New Jersey
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]