72 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavement- However, slavery met a quick death in Pennsylvania,
since by 1820, only 211 slaves remained in the state, and by
1840, slavery completely disappeared within Pennsylvania’s
borders.
Abolition did not come as easily to New York and
New Jersey as it did in Pennsylvania. Th e year 1784 saw
the defeat of a New York abolition bill based primarily on
economic grounds by Dutch planters in the lower Hudson
Valley. Aft er that defeat, New York Quakers allied with the
newly formed New York Manumission Society to introduce
another abolition bill in 1785. Aft er another intense lob-
bying campaign, New York passed a gradual emancipation
law that took eff ect on July 4, 1799. Any child born to a
slave aft er that date would be free aft er 28 years of inden-
ture for men and 25 for women. Key to the passage of the
emancipation bill was a compensated abolition program
that allowed slaveholders to abandon their slaves’ newborn
children to the care of the state. Aft er the abolition of slav-
ery across the North, New York emancipated all slaves born
before July 4, 1799, as of July 4, 1827. On July 4, 1827, slav-
ery in New York fi nally died.
New Jersey, the last Northern state to enact a gradual
emancipation program, had, along with New York, the lon-
gest relationship with slaves. New Jersey passed a gradual
emancipation law that took eff ect on July 4, 1804. Th e bill
essentially provided the same provisions as the New York
plan; however, New Jersey never passed a complete aboli-
tion program as New York did. Slavery existed in New Jer-
sey until the passage of the Th irteenth Amendment (which
New Jersey initially rejected) in 1865, thus ending the slave
experience in the North.
Aft er Emancipation, free blacks took on many of the
same jobs as they had when they were slaves. Th ey competed
for jobs as wage laborers in New York and Philadelphia or
worked on farms across central New Jersey. Although they
were free, blacks were refused the right to vote and suff ered
racism throughout the 19th century. Aft er Emancipation,
many whites who supported abolition turned to the coloni-
zation movement to help alleviate the large number of free
blacks in the cities and towns of the middle colonies. Th us,
the rhetoric of freedom that emanated from the Revolu-
tion neither freed all blacks from bondage nor eliminated
racism.
See also: African Burial Ground, New York City; African
Methodist Episcopal Church; Dutch New Netherland; Dutch
West India Company; Gradual Emancipation; New England
that year. Th e Conspiracy of 1741 revolved around blacks
setting fi re to various buildings in New York City, including
Fort George. Several blacks were convicted and burned at
the stake for allegedly setting fi re to the city. In each case,
the rebellions caused New York and its neighbors in New
Jersey to reevaluate their slave codes and attempt to enforce
tighter control on their slave populations.
Th e American Revolution dramatically changed the
shape of slavery in the Northern colonies. Th e outbreak
of war fueled abolitionist sentiment that had been present
since the mid-1700s. Rhetoric touting that the relationship
between slavery and freedom was the same as between the
American Colonies and Great Britain soon galvanized a
share of the population to question the suitability of fi ghting
for freedom while at the same time enslaving another race.
Th e largest group of antislavery supporters still remained
the Quakers. Although the Quakers who originally settled
in Pennsylvania had used slave labor, by 1761, Quakers in
New Jersey and Pennsylvania had outlawed slaveholding
among their own members and determined that they should
help rid the United States of the evil institution. Quaker
activism helped to introduce numerous bills into the colo-
nial legislatures and began the attack on slavery. Quakers
initially lobbied for better treatment for slaves, ending the
importation of Africans into the colonies, and the end of
stringent requirements for manumitting slaves, which in
most colonies required a slave owner to post a bond as high
as 200 pounds as well as pay a yearly supplement in order
to free a slave, leading many slave owners to choose to keep
their slaves instead of manumitting them.
Pennsylvania vied with Massachusetts as the leader
in Northern abolition. Philadelphia, the largest center of
Quaker activism in the United States, pressured Pennsyl-
vania to support abolition. Coupled with the rhetoric of
freedom stemming from the Revolution, the Pennsylvania
legislature passed a gradual emancipation bill in 1780 that
granted freedom to children born to slaves aft er they reached
the age of 28 years old. Emancipation in Pennsylvania re-
sulted from the support of Quakers and the Enlightenment
idea of freedom, but also from an examination of the eco-
nomic situation in the state. Since Pennsylvania possessed
a large enough population of wage laborers, the abolition of
slavery did not extremely hurt the state economically. How-
ever, those farmers along the Delaware River, coupled with
racist tendencies of the population at large, led to the failure
of achieving complete abolition by the state legislature in