History of slavery in Pennsylvania

1796 Runaway advertisement for Oney Judge, a slave from George Washington's presidential household in Philadelphia.

When the Dutch and Swedes established colonies in the Delaware Valley, they quickly imported African slaves for workers, or transported them from New Netherland; slavery was documented as early as 1639.^[1] William Penn and the colonists who settled Pennsylvania tolerated slavery, but the Quakers and later German immigrants were among the first to speak out against it. Many Methodists and Baptists also opposed it on religious grounds and urged manumission during the Great Awakening. High British tariffs in the 18th century discouraged the importation of additional slaves, and encouraged the use of white indentured servants and free labor.

During the American Revolutionary War, Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition Act (1780), the first such law in the new United States. Pennsylvania's law established as free those children born to slave mothers after that date. They had to serve lengthy periods of indentured servitude until age 28 before becoming fully free as adults. Emancipation proceeded and, by 1810 there were fewer than 1,000 slaves in the Commonwealth. None appeared in records after 1847.

British colony

After the founding of Pennsylvania in 1682, Philadelphia became the region's main port for the import of slaves. Throughout the colony and state's history, the majority of slaves lived in or near that city. Although most slaves came into the colony in small groups, in December 1684 the slave ship Isabella unloaded a cargo of 150 slaves from Africa. Accurate population figures do not exist for the colonial period, but more demographic data is available after 1750. Estate records from 1682 to 1705 reveal that during this period, less than 7% of families in Philadelphia owned slaves.^[2]

The first recorded formal protest against slavery, the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was signed by German members of a Quaker congregation. Even though a number of Quakers were slave-owners, the Quakers continued a protest against slavery. (See: Quakers in the Abolition Movement)

William Penn, the proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania, held 12 slaves as workers on his estate, Pennsbury. He left the colony in 1701, and never returned.

Laws

Until 1700 slaves came under the same laws that governed indentured servants. Beginning that year, slaves and free blacks were separated by laws and tried in non-jury courts, rather than under the same terms as other residents of the colony.

Under An Act for the Better Regulating of Negroes in this Province (March 5, 1725–1726), numerous provisions were passed that restricted slaves and free blacks.

• (Section I) if a slave was sentenced to death the owner would be paid full value for the slave.
• (Sec II) Duties on slaves transported from other colonies for a crime are doubled.
• (Sec III) If a slave is freed, the owner must have a sureties bond of £30 to indemnify the local government in case he/she becomes incapable of supporting himself.
• (Sec IV) A freed slave fit but unwilling to work shall be bound out [as an indentured servant] on a year-to-year basis as the magistrates see fit. And their male children may be bound out until 24 and women children until 21.
• (Sec V) Free Negroes and Mulattoes cannot entertain, barter or trade with slaves or bound servants in their homes without leave and consent of their master under penalty of fines and whipping.
• (Sec VI) If fines cannot be paid the freeman can be bound out.
• (Sec VII) A minister, pastor, or magistrate who marries a negro to a white is fined £100.
• (Sec VIII) If a white cohabits under pretense of being married with a negro, the white will be fined 30 shillings or bound out for seven years, and the white person's children will be bound out until 31. If a free negro marries a white, they become slaves during life. If a free negro commits fornication or adultery with a white they are bound out for 7 years. The white person shall be punished for fornication or adultery under existing law.
• (Sec IX) Slaves tippling or drinking at or near a liquor shop or out after nine 10 lashes.
• (Sec X) If more than 10 miles from their master's home 10 lashes.
• (Sec XI) Masters not allowed to have their slaves to find and or go to work at their own will receive a 20 shilling fine.
• (Sec XII) Harboring or concealing a slave a 30 shillings a day fine.
• (Sec XIII)Fine to be used to pay the owners of slaves sentenced to death. This law was repealed in 1780.^[3]

During the colonial period, Pennsylvania passed a series of laws to restrict the slave trade. Beginning in 1700, it imposed duties on the import of slaves. The Board of Trade in England rescinded the duties, which the Pennsylvania Assembly reimposed: 1700: 20 shillings per slave, 1750: 40 shillings, 1712: £20, 1715 to 1722 and again in 1725: £5: each time the Law was overturned in London it was re-established in Pennsylvania.^[1]

Conditions

In the first years of the colony, masters used slaves to clear land and build housing. Once the colony was established, the slaves took on a wider variety of jobs. In Philadelphia, where the majority of slaves lived, many were household servants, while others were trained in different trades and as artisans. In 1767, the wealthiest 10% of the population owned 44% of slaves; the poorest 50% of residents owned 5% of slaves. The wealthy used them as domestic servants and part of the trappings of wealth. Middling merchants kept slaves as servants, while also using some as apprentices in the business, or other jobs also occupied by indentured servants. As Philadelphia was a port city, many slaves were used in jobs associated with shipping. They worked as gangs in rope-walks, and learned sail making. Some sailors took slaves with them as workers so that the sailors could increase their share of profits, as the slaves would be given none.^[2] In rural areas, slaves generally worked as household servants or farmhands, and sometimes both depending on need, just as farm families took on all jobs. Iron masters who owned slaves sometimes leased them locally to work at charcoal manufacture and the surface mining of limestone and iron ore.^[4] Philadelphia was an unhealthy place during the colonial period, with a death rate of 58 per 1,000, and many slaves died early. As more males were imported than females at the time, family formation was limited and, without the continued import of new slaves, the slave population would not have increased.^[2]

Resistance and abolition

By the time of the French and Indian War, the number of slaves in the state was at its highest. More had been imported as fewer people from the British Isles were willing to come to the colonies as indentured servants when the economy improved in England. Given continued immigration to the colony, though, slaves as a percentage of the total population decreased over time.^[2] By the time of the American Revolution, slavery had decreased in importance as a labor source in Pennsylvania. The Quakers disapproved of the practice on religious grounds, as did Methodists and Baptists, active in the Great Awakening. In addition, the wave of recent German immigrants opposed it based on their religious and political beliefs. The Scots-Irish, also recent immigrants, generally settled in the backcountry on subsistence farms and, as a group, were too poor to buy slaves. In the late colonial period, people found it economically viable to pay for free labor. Another factor against slavery was the rising fervor of revolutionary ideals about the rights of man.^[1]

Religious resistance to slavery and the slave-import taxes led the colony to ban slave imports in 1767. Slaveholders among the state's Founding Fathers included: Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Robert Morris, Edmund Physick and Samuel Mifflin. Franklin and Dickinson both gradually became supporters of abolition and personally freed their slaves after the Revolution.

In 1780 Pennsylvania passed the first state Abolition Act in the United States. It followed Vermont's abolition of slavery in its constitution of 1777. The Pennsylvania law ended slavery through gradual emancipation, saying:

That all Persons, as well Negroes, and Mulattos, as others, who shall be born within this State, from and after the Passing of this Act, shall not be deemed and considered as Servants for Life or Slaves; and that all Servitude for Life or Slavery of Children in Consequence of the Slavery of their Mothers, in the Case of all Children born within this State from and after the passing of this Act as aforesaid, shall be, and hereby is, utterly taken away, extinguished and for ever abolished.^[5]

This act repealed the acts of 1700 and 1726 that had established separate courts and laws specific to Negroes. At this point, slaves had the same rights as bound servants; and free Negroes had, in theory, the same rights as free Whites. The law did not free those approximately 6,000 persons who were already slaves in Pennsylvania. Children born to slave mothers had to serve as indentured servants to their mother's master until they were 28 years old. ^[5] (Such indentures could be sold.)

Pennsylvania became a state with an established African American community. Black activists also saw the importance of writing about freedom. African activists gained access to papers run by anti slave supporters and printed articles about freedom. Pamphlets and writings about this were hard to find in the south, but thrived in the state of Pennsylvania. Africans activists also began to hold meetings around the state, which began to be disrupted by white rioters. The activists kept on holding the meetings in the face of danger. The African activists also realized that in order to keep Pennsylvania an anti slavery border state, they need to keep the border safe with various forms of protection. They amped up their efforts to aid runaway slaves and free captured ones. The activists created the Vigilant Association, which helped in both of those departments. ^[6]

Decline of slavery

In 1780, the abolition act provided for the children of slave mothers to be born free. It also required that these and children of African-descended indentured servants be registered at birth. Some Quarter Sessions records of Friends Meetings include births of children identified as mulatto or black.^[7]

The federal censuses reflect the decline in slavery. In addition to the effects of the state law, many Pennsylvania masters freed their slaves in the first two decades after the Revolution, as did Benjamin Franklin, inspired by its ideals as well as continued appeals by Quaker and Methodist clergy for manumission of slaves. The first U.S. Census in 1790 recorded 3,737 slaves in Pennsylvania (36% of the Black population). By 1810, the total Black population had more than doubled, but the percentage who were slaves had dropped to 3% and 795 slaves were listed in the state.^[2]

The following table represents the growth in Pennsylvania's free black population and decline of its slave population^[8]

See also

• History of Pennsylvania
• An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery (1780)
• Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842)

References

External links

• "Slavery in Pennsylvania", Slavery in the North website
• "Pennsylvania slavery by the numbers", USHistory.org
• "African Americans in Pennsylvania", President's House Museum Center
• Edward Raymond Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania Slavery-Servitude-Freedom, American Historical Association, 1911

Bibliography

• Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. (2003) ISBN 0-674-01061-2