Conclusion

Across the United States and through time, the shade of slavery falls on every incident and history, and Berks County, Pennsylvania only helps to illuminate this fact of a broader pro-slavery master narrative and imagination. From the Muhlenberg family’s history with slave-owning to the people who had attended Henry Muhlenberg’s sermons, the legacy of slavery falls atop them, recontextualizing not just the world around them, but also their words and actions. On one hand, instances of people like pastor Henry Muhlenberg—who fell on the moderate side of abolitionism—illuminates a growing moral and religious sentiment against the institution of slavery while continuing to work and live alongside those who fall on the other end of ideology, such as Henry’s brother-in-law and also the man who impregnated Alice Clifton, John Shaffer.

These examples, as well as the way similar instances continued to reiterate themselves in the rest of the county and nationwide through other slave owners and a passive white citizenry, all help to paint a more full picture of how systems of slavery continued to perpetuate themselves, but also growing sentiments against slavery and toward abolition during a period of broadly shifting attitudes around the notions of freedom and independence during the Revolutionary era.