Slavery In Law

Throughout the course of the eighteenth century in Pennsylvania, the state's legal foundations for slavery continued to shift alongside the public's view of slavery. Earlier in the century, in 1726, a law entitled "An Act for the Better Regulating of Negroes in This Province" was passed, which stripped both free and enslaved black people of virtually all of their public life rights. The law restricts black people's capacity to host other people of color in their company, forbids miscegenation, and explicitly bans them from "loitering" or "wandering", effectively criminalizing the public existence of black people outside of the context of labor. This law helps makes clear the attitudes held by the public and those in power at the time, shining a light on the intensely bigoted perceptions of Pennsylvania's black citizens, wherein their role in white society is to be considered either that of a criminal or servant character.

After over 50 years of this law being enacted, a new law was written into place in 1780, titled "An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery". In addition to nullifying the 1726 law, this Act also provided freedom for those born in the state and held in slavery, upon reaching the age of 28. This law, while stepping away from the more intense bigotries of "An Act for the Better Regulating of Negroes", still continues to exemplify the conflicting ideologies of pro-slavery and abolitionist whites, wherein abolition is seen to be a positive, necessary enough action as to write it into law, but the graduality of it appears noncommital and conditional, shining a light on the type of appeasement to slave-owning Pennsylvania families that these laws had to cater to.