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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]
Philadelphia: Printed by T. Bradford [1788] Printed broadside Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, Slave Records. "Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 did not free any slaves immediately. Instead, all slaves born prior to the law remained in bondage, while their children were free, but deemed indentured servants until age 28.
With the 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, Pennsylvania's government was the first to begin an abolition of slavery. But the state law was very gradual, and highly-respectful of the property rights of slaveholders. It freed only the future children of enslaved mothers.
Pennsylvania had begun a gradual abolition of slavery in 1780, freezing the number of slaves in the state and granting freedom to their future children. The law did not free anyone at once; its gradual abolition was to be accomplished over decades as the enslaved aged and died off.
Anthony Benezet (January 31, 1713 – May 3, 1784) was a French-born American abolitionist and teacher who was active in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.A prominent member of the abolitionist movement in North America, Benezet founded one of the world's first anti-slavery societies, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
In 1780, Pennsylvania had passed a law for gradual abolition of slavery, and Tilghman as a justice ruled in several freedom suits. The law required the registration of existing slaves at the time, who were considered "servants for life," and of children born in future years to former slave women now considered servants for life.