During the period, then, from 1750 to 1780 manumission among the Friends became very frequent. Many slaves were set free outright, their masters assuming the liability required by law. Others were manumitted on condition that they would not become chargeable.[183] Some owners gave promise of freedom at the end of a certain number of years, considering the service during those years an equivalent for the financial obligation which at the end they would have to assume.[184] Often the negro was given his liberty on condition that at a future time he would pay to the master his purchase price.[185] In 1751 a writer said that numerous negroes had gained conditional freedom, and were wandering around the country in search of employment so as to pay their owners. The magistrates of Philadelphia complained of this as a nuisance.[186]
Just how many slaves gained their freedom during this period it is impossible to say. The church records mention them again and again; and they become, what they had not been before, the occasion of frequent notice and serious speculation.[187] Other people began now to follow the Friends’ example,[188] and the belief in abstract principles of freedom aroused by the Revolutionary struggle gave further impetus to the movement.[189] In every quarter, now, manumissions were constantly being made.[190] Any estimate as to how many negroes, servants and free, there were in Pennsylvania by 1780 must be largely a conjecture, but it is perhaps safe to say that there were between four and five thousand.[191]
The act of 1780, which put an end to the further growth of slavery in Pennsylvania, marked the beginning of the final work of the liberators. Coming at a time when so many people had given freedom to their slaves, and passing with so little opposition in the Assembly as to show that the majority of Pennsylvania’s people no longer had sympathy with slavery, it was the signal to the abolitionists to urge the manumission of such negroes as the law had left in bondage. The task was made easier by the fact that not only was the value of the slave property now much diminished, but a man no longer needed to enter into surety when he set his slaves free. Doubtless many whose religious scruples had been balanced by material considerations, now saw the way smooth before them, or arranged to make the sacrifice cost them little or nothing at all. During this period manumission took on a commercial aspect which formerly had not been so evident. This was brought about in several ways.
Sometimes negroes had saved enough to purchase their liberty.[192] Many, as before, received freedom upon binding themselves to pay for it at the expiration of a certain time.[193] In this they often received assistance from well-disposed people, in particular from the Friends, who had by no means stopped the good work when their own slaves were set free.[194] At times the entire purchase money was paid by some philanthropist.[195] Frequently one member of a negro family bought freedom for another, the husband often paying for his wife, the father for his children.[196] Furthermore it had now become common to bind out negroes for a term of years, and many owners who desired their slaves to be free, found partial compensation in selling them for a limited period, on express condition that all servitude should be terminated strictly in accordance with the contract. By furthering such transactions the benevolent tried to help negroes to gain freedom.[197] Occasionally the slave liberated was bound for a term of years to serve the former master.[198] Even at this period, however, negroes continued to be manumitted from motives of pure benevolence. Some received liberty by the master’s testament, and others were held only until assurance was given the master that he would not become liable under the poor law.[199]
As the result of the earnest efforts that were made slavery in Pennsylvania dwindled steadily. In the course of a long time it would doubtless have passed away as the result of continued individual manumission. As a matter of fact, it had become almost extinct within two generations after 1750. This was brought about by work that affected not individuals, but whole classes, and finally all the people of the state; which was designed to strike at the root of slavery and destroy it altogether. This was abolition.
CHAPTER V.
The Destruction of Slavery—Abolition.
The events which led to the extinction of slavery in Pennsylvania fall naturally into four periods. They are, first, the years from 1682 to about 1740, during which the Germans discountenanced slave-holding, and the Friends ceased importing negroes; second, the period of the Quaker abolitionists, from about 1710 to 1780, by which time slavery among the Quakers had come to an end; third, from 1780 to 1788, the years of legislative action; and finally, the period from 1788 to the time when slavery in Pennsylvania became extinct through the gradual working of the act for abolition.
Opposition to slaveholding arose among the Friends. Slavery had not yet been recognized in statute law when they began to protest against it. This protest, faint in the beginning and taken up only by a few idealists, was never stopped afterwards, but, growing continually in strength, was, as the events of after years showed, from the first fraught with foreboding of doom to the institution. Opposition on the part of the Friends had begun before Pennsylvania was founded. In 1671 Fox, travelling in the West Indies, advised his brethren in Barbadoes to deal mildly with their negroes, and after certain years of servitude to make them free. Four years later William Edmundson in one of his letters asked how it was possible for men to reconcile Christ’s command, to do as they would be done by, with the practice of holding slaves without hope or expectation of freedom.[200] Nevertheless in the first years after the settlement of Pennsylvania Friends were the principal slaveholders. This led to differences of opinion, but at the start economic considerations prevailed.