Slavery and Republican Principles

• In the newly independent United States, slavery appeared to be in decline
• Britain's closure of West Indian markets hurt Chesapeake tobacco and Carolina rice industries
• Enslaved Americans faced conflicts between wanting freedom and the ties they had made
• Victorious Patriots were hesitant to swiftly free enslaved people
• They worked to maintain slave societies in the Chesapeake, Carolinas, and Georgia
• Mid-Atlantic enslavers reaffirmed their control

Slavery and Republican Principles

• The failure to apply republican principles to enslaved people is linked to slavery's economic geography

• States with smaller or marginal slave populations started to gradually abolish slavery after 1776

• Freedom did not, however, guarantee citizenship

• Vermont was the only state to immediately outlaw slavery, but it had a very small slave population

• Other New England states, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey adopted gradual abolition or let courts and African-descended people challenge enslavement

• States reliant on slave labor did not consider abolition

• Some states permitted individual manumission

• Virginia, Maryland, and other southern states liberalized manumission laws

• They retained property rights in people, and very few enslaved people negotiated their freedom

• Despite British market closures, South Carolina and Georgia planters started importing captive Africans again

• Chesapeake enslavers began selling bondspersons in an interstate trade when enslavers noticed the demand

• Enslavers kept bondspersons with market value, even in states where slavery was declining

• States north of Delaware gradually abolished slavery

Obstacles to Equality

• A long colonial history linked African descent to servitude which made it hard to have full equality

• Free African-descended people were disadvantaged by this perception

• As colonial hierarchies fell, those at the bottom were often at the mercy of wage and labor markets

• The new United States was a fragile confederation of independent states

• The federal constitution's creation was four years after Britain recognized U.S. independence

• States created individual laws regarding slavery, like their colonial predecessors

• Between 1777 and 1804, all states north of Maryland took steps to abolish slavery, mostly gradually

• Revolutionary state governments created new state constitutions that experimented with republican government

• Black activists like Lemuel Haynes and Felix Holbrook used the language of liberties and rights to appeal for abolition

• State legislators sometimes supported abolition measures, especially in states where slavery was less important

• Slavery-related measures were subject to compromise

• Its 1777 constitution abolished slavery and servitude for adult males/females and gave religious liberty/enfranchisement to nearly all adult males, no matter the race or servitude.

• Colorblind measures stirred little controversy because the state had few enslavers and a tiny black population

• The language of individual rights was just as forceful in The 1783 constitution of New Hampshire

• The slave population of New Hampshire, declined from 633 to 158 people between 1767 and 1790 and would be counted in single digits in nineteenth-century censuses

• Massachusetts adopted similar language

• Massachusetts' 1780 constitution stated that all men are born free and equal and have certain natural rights

• The Massachusetts constitution was essentially what Felix Holbrook had argued in 1773

• In Massachusetts, the challenge to slavery came from a former slave

• Twenty-eight-year-old Quok Walker fled his owner in 1781

• Walker thought he was a free man

• He refused to return was beaten when he refused to return and was locked in a barn

• Walker escaped and hired a lawyer to sue for assault

• Walker sought a legal remedy while the War of Independence was still active, showing how Revolutionary rhetoric had spread

• Walker v. Jennison ended in a court ruling saying slavery is inconsistent with conduct and Constitution

• Lower courts had already freed Massachusetts resident Mum Bett, also known as Elizabeth Freeman

• Even in freedom, women were not citizens and Married women's legal identities were still considered parts of their husbands'

• Black women like Elizabeth Freeman were doubly disenfranchised

• The Walker decision in Massachusetts did not free other slaves

• The decision stated the law did not protect slave property

• The legal state of being in between worked for Walker/abolition, but other bondspersons would have to file suit for freedom

• Some owners were outraged and tried selling their bondspersons to Barbados

• Public opinion was greatly in alignment with the high court

• Slavery was marginal in Massachusetts, as in other parts of New England, even though they enslaved Africans/Indians since the 17th century

• New York and Pennsylvania faced financial interests in slavery when dealing with it

• New York made a bad start to abolishing slavery

• in 1777, New York Constitution, that protected property, including the right to slave property was passed as fugitives from Virginia, and other states were relocating to British New York,

• The 1777 constitution allowed holders of land to vote no matter the race

• US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay wrote to Morris and Robert R. Livingston 1785, that he would be in favor against the continuation of domestic slavery

• Black New Yorkers pushed for freedom, and Jay led the New York Manumission Society

• Military service was an avenue to freedom in New York

• In 1781 while King stayed in New York City, the the state government freed anyone enslaved, who went to go serve the Patriot cause

• The state had a willingness to punish supporters of the Crown by stripping them of slave property

• Legislative supporters announced the Crown forfeited their properties following evacuees

• There were nearly 19,000 African-descended people in New York in 1786

• Census takers would count 21,324 slaves in New York in 1790

Pennsylvania and Slavery

• Pennsylvania fought with the topic of having rights to human liberty versus property rights

• Philadelphia had the most populated American city

• Home to the national Congress called at the Articles of Confederation

• Also, to many it was the epicenter of liberty

• The Declaration of Independence was drafted and adopted here

• Pennsylvania was also Quaker geographic center

• A reformer would be asked for freedom to African descendants

• 3 percent of slaves were of African population with some enslavers that were distributed

• In 1780, around 400 people in Philly that owned 539 bondpersons

• Chester County had 200 owners that possessed 493 slaves

• The state declined to end it for the tiny interest of slavery, The state declined to abandon

• Quacker organizing and petitions were overflowed with these petitions , Pennsylvania did not abolish slavery at first

• act stated Anyone born after march 1, 1780, was had to be placed into bondage for 28 years Owner could still have another 2 generations They stated that the law made an enslaved female be born in late feb 1780, she could give birth at age 40 for slavery act

• slavery was nearly ended In 1848 Philadelphia act was made in terms of liberation people had exploited state people in philadeipha

Rhode Island's Response

• The abolition passed in Rhode Island but was a half measurement

• There Society of Friends became very active for black freedom with the help of Quaker

• Those born after March 1, to females at 18, and to males at 21

• Even while these measurments had aided, merchants

• 41,581 captives to Americas between 1751-75

• Rhode Island shippers embarked 25,000 over middle passage

• over half to spanish Cololny

• The rhodes had continued to embark

• other so called free states didn't want it

• 1785 Connecticut had about 3,00 people in slavery passed graduated act

Efforts to Regulate Slavery

• Congressional efforts to regulate slavery's spread were ambivalent

• Congress under the Articles of Confederation prohibited slavery in territory north of Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania to Mississippi River

• The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states that their cannot slavery, nor involuntary servitude

• states carved out include; adopted state

• Some states that adopted the state

• States like Ohio, adopted anti-slavery constitutions

• Illinois and Indiana treataed blacks

• in 1790 pressure was met from enslavers to protect slavery

• The Congress met to pressure from the slave holders , passed that made nothing

• President Thomas Jefferson made the Compact of 1802 with Georgia

• That state ceded to it's land of west and of authorities

• Before the increase of cotton slavery in early state

• before cotton increase

• Until slavery in 1808

• Charlseston in 1807 the slaves coast sold with sold coast in 1807

• at the same time it was to slaverys expansion of coast

• at the same time Slavery expaned

Theories About Race

• Prejudice against Aftrican Decent peolple

• Since early days

• Until the enlightenment

• Carl LInaaus-

• Linas considered Africa decent

• The people that were crafted

• Europeans by contrast were acute and invented which they followed like a law for their contrast

• Some classical education

• in 1786 elected Virginina

• Historical moment with open possibilies, to argued that blacks should be

• Jefferson proposed to remove that African decndecsed to go their historical to threaten american

• Jeff was in plans with free the slaves

• People of blck should't join the black

• equal to the white people who were also inferior

• 1st century, Slave owner in Virginina and MD remianed deep at time of Revolution

• act from the lawer passed an law between 1712 and 1761 took legitslate

• lead from the quakers in some way where the lead came from

• convinved from being the natiral

• to the fellow men in slavery had been created

• backwgaes or health

• 11 percent move from after the revolutions freedom

• In the 1780's he wasn't on board with to oppose the activism

• to grant some kind of death after grant

• in Washington in 316

• Washington would give 193