History of slavery in Pennsylvania
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.
Philadelphia Quakers rejected the petition, writing, "We having inspected ye matter, above mentioned, and considered of it, we find it so weighty that we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here.
Under An Act for the Better Regulating of Negroes in this Province (March 5, 1725 – 1726), numerous provisions restricted slaves and free blacks.
[6] 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.
In Southeastern Pennsylvania, iron masters who owned slaves sometimes leased them out locally to work at charcoal manufacture and the surface mining of limestone and iron ore.[7] Due to a lack of sanitation and understanding of disease transmission, Philadelphia was an unhealthy place during the colonial period, with a death rate of 58 per 1,000.
More had been imported in the mid-18th century, as the improving economy in the British Isles had resulted in fewer immigrants coming as indentured servants.
The Quakers had long disapproved of the practice on religious grounds, as did Methodists and Baptists, active in the Great Awakening.
In addition, the recent wave of German immigrants opposed it based on their religious and political beliefs.
In the late colonial period, people found it economically viable to pay for free labor.
[1]: 1 Religious resistance to slavery and the slave-import taxes led the colony to ban slave imports in 1767.
[citation needed] Slaveholders among the state's Founding Fathers included Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Robert Morris, Edmund Physick and Samuel Mifflin.
Black activists understood the importance of writing about freedom, and were essential participants in abolitionist groups.
African-American activists also contributed to the operations of the Underground Railroad, and aided formerly enslaved people to freedom in the state.
The activists created the Vigilant Association in Philadelphia, which helped refugees from slavery to escape from enslavers and get resettled in free states.
Some Quarter Sessions records of Friends Meetings include births of children identified as mulatto or black.
In addition to the effects of the state law, many Pennsylvania slaveholders freed their slaves in the first two decades after the Revolution, as did Benjamin Franklin.
