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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.
English: Text in source: State of Pennsylvania. An act to explain and amend an act, entitled, “An act for the gradual abolition of slavery.” 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.
Speech of the Hon. B. Gratz Brown, of St. Louis, on the subject of gradual emancipation in Missouri - delivered in the House of Representatives (Missouri) Feb 12, 1857 Gradual emancipation was a legal mechanism used by some U.S. states to abolish slavery over some time, such as An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery of 1780 in Pennsylvania.
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.
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.
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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]