Enslavementto
freedom
A series of pages exploring
various aspects of enslavement in Pennsylvania
Frequently
Asked Questions
About Slavery in Pennsylvania
► What was the date that slavery ended in Pennsylvania, officially and unofficially. Also, what was the method?
► How could there be so many term slaves in Pennsylvania in 1850, seventy years after passage of the Gradual Abolition Act?
► What were some legal methods to abolish slavery and what were some obstacles that stood in the way of abolition?
► When did slavery end in the other northern states?
► What is the difference between a "term slave" and a "slave for life?"
► According to old advertisements on your site, many captured slaves were kept in something called a "goal." What is that?
► I saw something on the news the other night in reference to the end of slavery being June 19, 1865, however I didn't catch all of it. Please tell me the significance of this date.
► What are the reasons why white Americans treated African Americans so badly in the years of slavery?
Q. What was the date that slavery ended in Pennsylvania, officially and unofficially. Also,what was the method?
A. No one knows for sure exactly when the last Pennsylvania slave crossed from being held in bondage to complete freedom, whether through manumission, legal action, or death. The census of 1850 was the first national census to record no slaves being held for life in the state (see note below), however there were still, in 1850, hundreds of children of enslaved mothers, who we now refer to as "term slaves," who were fully enslaved until their 28th birthday, in accordance with the 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.
Officially, slavery ended
in Pennsylvania with the state's ratification of the 13th amendment
to the Constitution on February 3, 1865. For more information
on gradual abolition, see our text of the 1780
Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.
Note: The census of 1850 reported
no slaves-for-life in the state of Pennsylvania, yet some researchers
have questioned whether that is true. They note that the 1850
census was the first census in Pennsylvania that had no column in
which to record slaves. They believe census takers merely counted
enslaved persons along with other non-white members of the households.
Q. How could there be so many term slaves in Pennsylvania in 1850, seventy years after passage of the Gradual Abolition Act?
A. The "hundreds of children of slaves" that were still around in 1850 came as a result of many severe abuses, misunderstandings and simple disregard for the law. Some of the most blatant and frequent abuses occurred in Lancaster County, where the grand-children of enslaved persons were themselves registered as children of slaves for another twenty-eight years. This practice obviously sets up an endless cycle very much contrary to the spirit of the law--yet few or none were challenged in court. Some of these abuses were the result of a misunderstanding of the law and some were justified by the slaveholders as being necessary to recover losses due to the pregnancy of term slaves. In the latter cases, additional years were added by the courts to the terms of enslaved women who became pregnant while serving their twenty-eight year term, and their children, once born, were themselves registered as slaves for twenty-eight years.
For specific cases, see the entries for Mary H. Thompson, of Colerain Township, Lancaster County, for the slave child Saul, who was registered in 1830 as the "child of negro Eliza, servant of the said Mary H. Thompson until she arrives to the age of 28 years;" and the entry for Michael Graeff of the city of Lancaster, who in 1827 registered the child Chloe Ann, daughter of Hannah Boyle. Hannah had been registered as a child of a slave in 1805. Thomas Brice of Washington Borough, Washington County, in April 1829 registered Ann Clark the child of "Betsey a Slave until 28 years."
Q. What were some legal methods to abolish slavery and what were some obstacles that stood in the way of abolition?
A. In
Pennsylvania, the only method of legally abolishing slavery was the
1780 Gradual Abolition Act, which is explained
below. In addition, slaveholders could manumit, or free,
enslaved persons by putting this in writing and filing the document with the
county or township in which they lived. This could be a direct manumission,
or it could be predicated on certain conditions, such as the death
of the slaveholder, in a will. Of course manumission was a personal choice,
and had no effect on the larger issue of abolition.
Obstacles to the abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania included resistance by
slaveholders, who did not want to lose the use of this labor force
and the value that they had invested in their slaves. That is probably why
the 1780 Act was gradual and not immediate. This allowed slaveholders to keep
until death those enslaved persons that they already "owned," and only abolished lifetime
slavery, but substituting term slavery, for those born after March 1, 1780.
Another obstacle was the societal fear that manumitted slaves would become a burden
on their local community due to the mistaken belief that they would not know
how to support themselves. For this reason, those persons who chose to manumit
enslaved persons were required to post a bond within their community in case those former slaves
became dependent on the public for support, or the slaveholder had to file
papers agreeing to provide money to support the slaves.
Q. When did slavery end in the other northern states?
A. While some northern states prohibited slavery from the start, most had a history of tolerating or encouraging slaveholding. The revolution had a strong impact on how slavery was perceived, and most northern states began to debate abolition during or soon after the war. However, in states that passed gradual abolition legislation, slavery lingered in the form of term slavery for decades. For many states, the only official end to slavery came in 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Chronologically, slavery ended in:
Vermont, 1777 (slavery prohibited
by the state constitution)
Pennsylvania, 1780 (Gradual Abolition legislation)
Massachusetts, 1783 (Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling)
New Hampshire, 1783 or 1789 (accounts vary--no judicial records verify abolition)
Rhode Island, 1784 (Gradual Abolition legislation)
Connecticut, 1784 and 1797 (Gradual Abolition legislation)
New York, 1799 and 1817 (Gradual Abolition legislation)
Ohio, 1802 (slavery prohibited by the state constitution)
New Jersey, 1804 (Gradual Abolition legislation)
Indiana, 1816 (slavery prohibited by the state constitution)
Illinois, 1818 (slavery prohibited by the state constitution)
This information is from Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961) page 3. For more details about individual states and the persistence of slavery, see "Slavery in the North." (http://www.slavenorth.com/index.html)
Q. What is the difference between a "term slave" and a "slave for life?"
A. When Pennsylvania legislators decided to abolish slavery in the state, they knew that a complete and immediate abolition of the practice would cause a financial loss to slaveholders by freeing those persons that were already held in bondage. They also knew that this would be politically unpopular, and might not pass a vote in the legislature. So they decided on a gradual approach, setting a cut-off date, whereby all of the persons held in bondage as of March 1, 1780 would remain in bondage, but all children of slaves born in Pennsylvania after that date would be held in bondage only until age twenty-eight.
This created two classes of slaves. Those born prior to March 1, 1780 and considered slaves for their entire lives would remain "slaves for life." However the children born after that date, to mothers who were considered "slaves for life," would be freed at age 28, and were originally referred to as "indentured servants," but who we now refer to as "term slaves." We do this to distinguish these persons from other servants who were serving an indenture, usually of only a few years, in order to learn a trade or pay a debt. For more information on gradual abolition, see our text of the 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.
Q. According to old advertisements on your site, many captured slaves were kept in something called a "goal." What is that?
A. When local authorities suspected that an unfamiliar African American man or woman in their town was actually a runaway slave, they arrested the person and locked him or her up for further investigation. They would then take out an advertisement in a local newspaper describing their prisoner. Similarly, owners of enslaved persons that had run away usually placed advertisements describing the runaway and the circumstances of his or her escape. Both types of ads commonly referred to the place of confinement for the captured slave as a goal or gaol. "Gaol" is nothing more than the old British spelling for our modern word "jail"--it's even pronounced the same way--and old newspapers often misspelled the word as "goal." Jailers were referred to as gaolkeepers or gaolers (or goalkeepers and goalers). Click here for an example of an advertisement that uses this term.
Q. I saw something on the news the other night in reference to the end of slavery being June 19, 1865, however I didn't catch all of it. Please tell me the significance of this date.
A. People
celebrate various dates in this country regarding the end of slavery,
and it depends upon your viewpoint of when it really ended. January
1st is often celebrated because it is the official date that Abraham
Lincoln set in the Emancipation Proclamation for the end of slavery
in areas affected by the proclamation. Many African American churches
still celebrate this date with an event known as "Watch Night," held
on New Year's Eve. (click
here for more on this subject)
August 1 used to be celebrated as Emancipation Day, as it marked the date in
1834 when Great Britain outlawed slavery in the British West Indies. This date
was celebrated by African Americans in Harrisburg as late as 1859, according
to news accounts from the time. Some free African Americans preferred
to celebrate July 5th, which was sometimes called the "Negroes' July 4th" because
African Americans, prior to the Civil War, had little reason to celebrate independence
alongside of whites, as the thinking went. Therefore many African Americans
spent July 4th inside in protest, and out of a sense of safety, as rowdy whites
often threw firecrackers at them. All of this changed after the Civil War,
and neither of these dates are widely celebrated in the present day.
June 19, 1865 is known as "Juneteenth," and it marks the day when
Union troops entered Galveston, Texas, to announce the end of the Civil War.
Up to that point, few of the slaves in Texas knew that the war had ended, and
they were still being held in slavery. In reality, the war had ended over a
month earlier. As word spread among slaves, in the following days, that the
war had ended, they celebrated their new-found freedom and continued to hold
celebrations every June 19th. Gradually the date became celebrated outside
of Texas and today is commonly called Juneteenth, and commemorates the day
that the last slaves in the U.S. were liberated.
It must be noted that enslaved persons were still held in the Indian Territories, since emancipation did not apply to those territories. Those enslaved persons remained in bondage until emancipated in 1866 by various treaties.
Q. What are the reasons why white Americans treated African Americans so badly in the years of slavery?
A. Let's
begin by recognizing that all persons in every type of bondage everywhere were, and are, treated
horribly. Slavery has existed since the times of ancient Greece and Rome,
and it exists today in many parts of the world. It existed, and
exists wherever human beings allow their greed to overcome their compassion.
You cannot "own" another human being as an
object. Therefore, persons who "own" slaves refuse to
recognize the basic humanity in these persons and instead
view these persons as something less than human beings.
I stated above that all enslaved persons everywhere were and are treated horribly.
Some cultures claim to respect certain rights among those they consider
as slaves, and claim those slaves were or are treated as members of the family and are
treated with basic human dignities. I reject this claim because slavery is,
in itself, an abomination to all persons who respect the basic right of any
person to decide their own fate.
To answer your question more directly, white Americans who held slaves (and
some Black Americans, too, were slaveholders), as well as those Americans who tolerated
slavery, treated Africans and other non-white people badly because they
refused to recognize their basic humanity. Some were blinded by greed, others
by the fear of persons who appeared differently from them. Many believed
that white people, especially white people with European heritage, were culturally
superior to all other people. They then extended this idea to believe that
this supposed cultural superiority gave them the right to control and even
to own and exploit other human beings. Tragically, this belief persists to this day.
It took hundreds of years of protest by Black and white Americans, and a very
bloody civil war, to end slavery in the United States. Unfortunately, slavery
still exists in many other parts of the world. Even more regrettably, the concept
that some people are better than others simply because of their race, heritage,
or religion, still exists in the United States and elsewhere in the world. However we can take comfort
that our society as a whole recognizes the basic human dignity of all people,
and that we continue to work to erase bigotry and discrimination based upon these
concepts.