University:
Arizona State University
Course:
HST 200 | Historical Themes
Academic year:

2024
Views:

488

Pages:

1
Author:

Thuyoul US

Creating Republican Governments, 1776-1790 Freedom Although slavery persisted in all of the new states and racial thought was ingrained in the nation, the Revolution's principles sparked a drive to abolish slavery. One route out of slavery was through private manumissions, in which slaveholders released their enslaved individuals. In Virginia, slaveholders let free about ten thousand individuals. When Phillis was twenty-one years old in 1773, the Wheatley family manumitted her to Massachusetts. Other revolutionaries established organizations devoted to eradicating slavery. Dr. Benjamin Rush and other Philadelphia Quaker's founded the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1775, marking one of the first attempts. In a same vein, in 1785, affluent New Yorkers established the New York Manumission Society. This association invested money to keep free Black people safe from kidnapping and tried to educate Black children. Nonetheless, slavery remained throughout the North, and the Massachusetts case emphasizes how complicated the situation was. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 effectively emancipated all slaves. Still, hundreds of people were held as slaves in the state. A string of court rulings in the 1780s effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts when a number of individuals successfully petitioned for freedom in court, claiming attacks by their masters. Following the American Revolution, these individuals refused to be regarded as slaves. In 1800, there were still roughly eleven hundred persons being detained in the New England states in spite of these judicial successes. The inconsistencies highlight the differences between the Massachusetts slavery statutes' letter and spirit. Over 36,000 individuals were still held as slaves in the North overall, with the largest numbers found in New Jersey and New York. Slavery in New York was only progressively abolished; the final slaves were set free in the late 1820s.