Slavery In Law

Throughout the course of the eighteenth century in Pennsylvania, the state's legal foundations for slavery continued to oscillate back and forth alongside the variance in public opinion. 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 restricted black people's capacity to host other people of color in their company, forbade miscegenation, and explicitly bans them from "loitering" or "wandering", effectively criminalizing the public existence of black people outside of the context of labor in the service of white people. As stated in section IX of the Act, "Therefore be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if any negro shall at any time be found tippling or drinking in or near any house or shop where strong liquors are sold, or be found out of or absent from his master or mistress's house after nine o'clock at night without license from his said master or mistress, [ he ] shall be whipped on his or her bare back at his master's or owner's own cost, not exceeding ten lashes, by order of any justice of the peace."  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, even to those with gripes about the institution of slavery.

After over 50 years of this law being held, a new bill was introduced in 1780, titled "An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery". In addition to nullifying the discriminatory 1726 law, this Act also provided unconditional freedom for those born in the state and held in slavery, upon reaching the age of twenty-eight. This law, while stepping away from the more intense bigotries of "An Act for the Better Regulating of Negroes", still continues to exemplify a level of discomfort with an immediate abolition of slavery.

This half measure only serves to illustrate the presence of the failure to reconcile the ideologies of anti-slavery espoused and paraded by abolitionist whites with the reality of the situation wherein when given opportunities to disrupt or end the system of chattel slavery in Pennsylvania, the same self proclaimed abolitionists fail to capitalize on them in any meaningful way. Simply claiming to be pro-abolition was thought to be meaningful work towards ending slavery. The incrementality of change in small doses over time communicates a lack of commitment to the enslaved, many of whom were living in abject misery as a result of their enslavement.