Was the Revolution a "missed
opportunity" to peacefully end slavery?
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he Revolution greatly stimulated opposition to
slavery. Many Americans recognized that it was hypocritical for them to fight
for liberty while they continued to hold slaves. Slavery contradicted the idea
that all human beings were born with certain natural and inalienable rights,
including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, enshrined
in the Declaration of Independence.
Between the 1760s and the 1780s, large numbers of
white Americans began to grapple, for the first time, with the discrepancy of
slavery in a republican society committed to liberty. A series of events
illustrate the revolutionary generation's unease with slavery.
· In 1770, Massachusetts debated
a bill "to prevent the...inslaving Mankind in the Province."
· In 1774, the Continental
Congress prohibited the Atlantic slave trade.
· Also in
1774, Vermont became the first political jurisdiction to outlaw slavery when it
prohibited the institution in its Constitution.
· In 1780,
Pennsylvania became the first state to vote to end slavery, when it adopted a
gradual emancipation plan.
· In 1782,
Virginia repealed its ban on private manumissions; Delaware did the same in
1787 and Maryland in 1790.
· In 1783,
Thomas Jefferson proposed that Virginia outlaw the introduction of any more
slaves into the state and declare all African Americans born after Dec. 31,
1800, free.
· In 1784,
the leaders of the Methodists--the fastest growing religious denomination in
Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia--prohibited slaveholders from joining the
church and called on Methodists who owned slaves to free them.
During and immediately after the Revolution, all
the states prohibited the Atlantic slave trade; Georgia was the last in 1798,
though South Carolina temporarily reopened the trade in 1803, provoking shock
in the other states.
At the same time, all the northern states
committed themselves to emancipation. Vermont outlawed slavery in its constitution;
Massachusetts and New Hampshire ended slavery by judicial decree. Pennsylvania,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island adopted gradual emancipation measures. Even in
states where slave holding interests were deeply entrenched, gradual
emancipation schemes adopted. New York passed a gradual abolition law in 1799
and New Jersey in 1804. For a time it seemed that Maryland and Delaware might
adopt similar legislation.
Questions
for discussion:
Read Pennsylvania's
gradual emancipation law and answer the following questions:
1. How many slaves did the law immediately
free? (None)
2. At what age were the newborn children
of slaves to be freed? (28, after a long period of indentured servitude)
3. In approximately what year would
slavery be totally abolished in Pennsylvania? (perhaps not until 1848)