All of the American colonies had slave populations. Although slaves were most numerous and important to the Southern colonies, Northern merchants also prospered from shipping the slave-produced staples of the South. Northern merchants, particularly those in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, also dominated the foreign slave trade. Thus, by the time of the Revolution, slavery was an integral component of American society.
When the war ended and Americans achieved independence, the presence of slavery presented a set of ideological problems. If the war for independence was based in part on the principles within the Declaration of Independence, the persistence of slavery in the new nation was a blatant hypocrisy. Northern merchants and Southern planters immediately revived the African slave trade. In reaction to this, abolition societies sprang up in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, with Quakers in the vanguard.
Between 1783 and 1787 various states—Maryland, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and South Carolina—passed laws prohibiting the slave trade or tightening existing laws, while North Carolina laid a prohibitory duty on slave importations. But this state-by-state action was slow, limited, and reversible.
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- Thomas Jefferson: A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774
- The Continental Association, 20 October 1774
- A Proposal to Free the Slaves, 9 June 1775
- Samuel Hopkins to William Cushing, 29 December 1775
- Declaration of Independence: Deleted Clauses, 28 June 1776
- Revolutionary Era Declarations of Rights, 1776-1784
- Jonathan Dickinson Sargent: Plan to Free the Slaves, August 1776
- Prince Hall: Petition to the Massachusetts Legislature, 13 January 1777
- Pennsylvania Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, 1 March 1780
- Virginia Manumission Law, May 1782
- Reactions to the Resumption of the Slave Trade, 1783, 1787
- Massachusetts Outlaws Slavery: Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Nathaniel Jennison, 1783
- Origins of the 3/5 Clause: Debates in Congress, 1783
- Lafayette’s Emancipation Plan and Correspondence, 1783–1786
- Rhode Island Gradual Abolition Law, February 1784
- Virginia Attempts to Abolish Slavery, 1785
- Northwest Ordinance, 17 July 1787
- Richard Price: Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, 1784
- Richard Price to John Jay, Newington Green, near London, 9 July 1785