At this convention two memorials were adopted, one to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and the other to Congress, asking for suitable laws to suppress the slave trade.
The petition to Congress was referred to a committee, which made a report recommending the passage of a law against the fitting out of any ship or vessel in any port of the United States, or by foreigners, for the purpose of procuring from any part of the coast of Africa the inhabitants of the said country, to be transshipped into any foreign ports or places of the world to be sold or disposed of as slaves. The law was finally passed on March 22, 1794, and vessels were thereafter liable to heavy fine and forfeiture, and the freedom of the slaves on board.
Thus after the taunt of the early German settlers, the Quakers cleared their own skirts and then led in the movement which abolished slaves from Pennsylvania and were the first to lay this great question before Congress.
First Magazine in America Published in
Philadelphia, February 13, 1741
There has been recent controversy, especially among New York newspapers, regarding the oldest magazine in America, one such newspaper concluding that the oldest such publication was Oliver Oldschool’s “Portfolio,” published by Bradford and Inskeep, of Philadelphia, and Inskeep and Bradford, in New York, 1809–1810.
That is not the fact and Pennsylvania cannot be denied the honor of being the home of the earliest magazine published on this continent.
On November 6, 1740, Andrew Bradford’s “Mercury,” published in Philadelphia, contained a two page editorial which must surely have caused some sensation, heralding as it did a genuine innovation.