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[[File:GradualAbolition.jpg|thumb|250px|''An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery'', Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, March 1, 1780, [[Pennsylvania State Archives]]]]
'''An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery''', passed by the Fifth [[Pennsylvania General Assembly]] on 1 March 1780, prescribed an end for slavery in the [[Pennsylvania|Commonwealth of Pennsylvania]] in the United States. It was the first slavery abolition act in the course of human history to be adopted by an elected body.

This state legislative action prohibited the further importation of children and adults into the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the purposes of enslaving them, required Pennsylvania slaveholders to annually register the names of the individuals they were continuing to enslave (with forfeiture for noncompliance, and [[manumission]] for the enslaved), and established that all children born in Pennsylvania were free persons regardless of the condition or [[race (human categorization)|race]] of their parents.

Individuals who had been enslaved in Pennsylvania before the 1780 law came into effect remained enslaved for life. Pennsylvania's "[[Gradual emancipation (United States)|gradual abolition]]"—rather than Massachusetts's 1783 "instant abolition"—became a model for freeing enslaved people in other northern states.

==1780 Act==
A draft bill for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery was initially presented on August 21, 1778.  It eventually passed on March 1, 1780.  Matthew Hughes (1733-1810) of Buckingham Township, Bucks County, is credited as the author and chief advocate of the legislation.  He was the great-grandson of Judge [[William Biles]], an early Pennsylvania legislator and justice of the first Supreme Court for Pennsylvania.  He was also a great-grandson of Governor [[Samuel Jennings|Samuel Jenings]], the first elected governor of West New Jersey.

The 1780 Act prohibited the further importation of children and adults into the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the purpose of enslavement, but also preserved what were considered, at that time, to be the "property rights" of Pennsylvanians who were engaged in the practice of chattel slavery by not freeing enslaved people already held in bondage. It changed the legal status of future children born to enslaved Pennsylvania mothers from "slave" to "[[indentured servant]]," but required those children to continue working for their mothers' enslavers until the age of 28. To verify that no additional enslaved individuals were imported, the Act created a registry of all enslaved children and adults in the commonwealth. Pennsylvanians who failed to annually register the individuals they were continuing to enslave, or who handled those registrations improperly, were required by law to set the individuals they were enslaving free by manumission.<ref>[http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/gradual.htm 1780 Gradual Abolition Act] ((webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151222073819/http://www.ushistory.org//presidentshouse/history/gradual.htm |date=2015-12-22 ))</ref>

The 1780 Act specifically exempted members of the [[U.S. Congress]], allowing those elected officials to continue their enslavement of children and adults for their own purposes. At that time, the U.S. Congress was the only branch of the federal government operating under the [[Articles of Confederation]]; it met in [[Philadelphia]].

=== Members of the Fifth Pennsylvania General Assembly ===
<nowiki>*</nowiki>member list incomplete / vote incomplete<ref>((Cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/96504125/|title=List of members of the Fourth General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, the 25th day of October, A.D., 1779.|date=1779|website=Library of Congress))</ref>

==== Northumberland County ====
* [[William Montgomery (Pennsylvania soldier)|William Montgomery]] — "yes"<ref>((Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/inmemoryofgenlwi00russ|title=In Memory of Gen'l William Montgomery, Gen'l Daniel Montgomery, and John C. Boyd|last=Russel|first=A.F.|publisher="Intelligencer" Publishers|year=1879|pages=[https://archive.org/details/inmemoryofgenlwi00russ/page/8 8]))</ref><ref>((Cite web|url=https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/BiosHistory/MemBio.cfm?ID=5257&body=S|title=William Montgomery (id: 5257)|last=Pennsylvania|first=State Senate|website=Biographical Directory of the Pennsylvania Assembly.))</ref>

==== City of Philadelphia ====

* [[George Bryan]] — "yes"
* William Hollingshead
* Jacob Schriener
* Michael Shubart
* [[Charles Willson Peale|Charles Wilson Peale]]

==== Philadelphia County ====

* [[John Bayard]]
* Robert Knox
* Robert Lollar
* Joseph M'Clean
* [[Edward W. Heston|Edward Heston]] — "yes"
* William Coats
* [[Daniel Hiester]]
* Samuel Mechlin
* Joseph Blewer

==== Bucks County ====

* [[Gerardus Wynkoop II]]
* Matthew Hughes [III]
* Benjamin Fell
* William Scott
* Arthur Watts
* Joseph Savage

==== Chester County ====

* David Thomas
* Henry Hayes
* John Fulton
* James Boyd
* [[Patrick Anderson (assemblyman)|Patrick Anderson]]
* Joseph Park
* [[William Harris (colonist)|William Harris]]
* [[John Morton (American politician)#Personal life|Sketchly Morton]]

==== Lancaster County ====

* James Anderson
* John Smiley
* John Gilchreest
* Christopher Kucher
* James Cunningham
* William Brown Sr.
* Emanuel Carpenter, Jr.
* William Porter

==== Northampton County ====

==== York County ====

==== Cumberland County ====

==== Bedford County ====

==== Westmoreland County ====

==1788 Amendment==
An Amendment, created to explain and to close loopholes in the 1780 Act, was passed in the Pennsylvania legislature on March 29, 1788. The Amendment prohibited Pennsylvanians from transporting pregnant enslaved women out-of-state so that their children would be born enslaved, and also prohibited Pennsylvanians from separating enslaved husbands from wives and enslaved children from parents. It required Pennsylvanians to register, within six months, the births of children to enslaved mothers. It prohibited all Pennsylvanians from participating in, building or equipping ships for, or providing material support to the [[History of slavery|slave trade]].<ref>[http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/amendment1788.htm 1788 Amendment] ((webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100626015903/http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/amendment1788.htm |date=June 26, 2010 ))</ref>

The 1780 Act initially allowed non-resident slaveholders visiting Pennsylvania to hold enslaved people in bondage within the commonwealth for up to six months; however, a loophole was soon identified and exploited. It enabled non-resident slaveholders to void this residency requirement by taking the individuals they were enslaving out of Pennsylvania before the six-month deadline took effect. This meant that the residency requirement could be easily voided by simply relocating enslaved individuals to neighboring states for one day before returning them to Pennsylvania. The 1788 Amendment, however, prohibited this rotation of enslaved people in and out-of-state to subvert Pennsylvania law.

==Washington's dilemma==
The 1780 Act had exempted members of the U.S. Congress from prohibitions on the practice of chattel slavery. By 1790, when Philadelphia became the temporary national capital, there were three branches of the federal government operating under the [[Constitution of the United States|U.S. Constitution]]. There was confusion about whether or not the Pennsylvania law extended to all federal officials; members of Congress (legislative branch) remained exempt, but there was uncertainty regarding whether justices of the [[U.S. Supreme Court]] (judicial branch) and the [[President of the United States|U.S. President]] and the [[Cabinet of the United States|U.S. Cabinet]] (executive branch) would also be exempt. When [[United States Attorney General]] [[Edmund Randolph]] was required by Pennsylvania law to manumit the individuals he had been enslaving, he conveyed this advice to President [[George Washington]] through the president's secretary, [[Tobias Lear]]:

<blockquote>This being the case, the Attorney General conceived, that after six months residence, your slaves would be upon no better footing than his. But he observed, that if, before the expiration of six months, they could, upon any pretense whatever, be carried or sent out of the State, but for a single day, a new era would commence on their return, from whence the six months must be dated for it requires an entire six months for them to claim that right.<ref name=Lear2Wash>Tobias Lear to George Washington, 24 April 1791.</ref></blockquote>

Washington argued privately that his presence in Philadelphia was solely a consequence of the city being the temporary national capital, and that he remained a citizen of [[Virginia]] and subject to its laws on slavery. Still, he was careful not to spend six continuous months in Pennsylvania, which might be interpreted as establishing legal residency. Litigating the issue might have clarified his legal status and that of other slaveholding federal officials, but it also would have called attention to his slaveholding in the [[President's House (Philadelphia)|President's House]] and put him at risk of losing those slaves to manumission.<ref>Washington brought 8 slaves to Philadelphia in November 1790. Four of them, he returned to Mount Vernon in Spring 1791, before the 6-month deadline. Two of them were taken on a short trip to New Jersey by Martha Washington, which interrupted their 6-month residency. Two of them were trusted not to take advantage of the Pennsylvania law to seize their freedom.</ref> It was thought that he followed Randolph's advice and knowingly and repeatedly violated the state's 1788 Amendment by rotating the enslaved Africans in his presidential household into and out of Pennsylvania.<ref>((cite web |last=Lawler |first=Edward Jr |url=http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves/numbers.php |title=The President's House: Slavery by the Numbers |website=[[UShistory.org]] |access-date=12 September 2016))</ref> 

There is no record of Washington being challenged. According to Lear, the [[Pennsylvania Abolition Society]] seems to have turned a blind eye to the President's actions:

<blockquote>That the Society in this city for the abolition of slavery, had determined to give no advice and take no measures for liberating those Slaves which belonged to the Officers of the general Government or members of Congress. But notwithstanding this, there were not wanting persons who would not only give them (the Slaves) advise ((sic)), but would use all means to entice them from their masters.<ref name=Lear2Wash/></blockquote>

==Federal officials==
Other slaveholding officers of the executive and judicial branches faced a similar dilemma. [[US Secretary of State|Secretary of State]] [[Thomas Jefferson]] swore that he would eventually free his enslaved cook, [[James Hemings]], if Hemings would agree not take advantage of Pennsylvania's abolition law.<ref>The affidavit is quoted in Garry Wills, ''Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power'' (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), pp. 210-11. ((ISBN|978-0-618-34398-0))</ref>

Philadelphia's hostile environment for slaveholders was one of the reasons that the Constitution was written to give Congress exclusive control "over such District... as may... become the seat of the government of the United States".<ref>[[Article One of the United States Constitution]]</ref>((fv|date=April 2020))<!--need a source that supports the idea that the hostile environment was the *reason* for the clause-->

==Aftermath==
Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before its 1780 Act became law continued to be lifelong slaves, unless manumitted. Also, the 1780 Act and its 1788 Amendment did not apply to [[fugitive slave]]s from other states or their children. Pennsylvania tried to extend rights to fugitive slaves through an 1826 [[personal liberty laws|personal liberty law]], but it and the 1788 Amendment were ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in ''[[Prigg v. Pennsylvania]]'' (1842).

Although slavery steadily declined in Pennsylvania, the state that had initially led the way toward abolition tolerated it for decades after it ended in Massachusetts. The [[1840 U.S. Census]] listed 47,854 (99.87%) of the state's blacks as free, and 64 (0.13%) as slaves.<ref>Ira Berlin, ''Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves'' (2003), pp. 276-78. ((ISBN|0-674-01061-2))</ref>

==Other states==
((more citations needed|date=August 2012))
*1777: The [[Constitution of Vermont (1777)|Constitution of Vermont]] bans slavery.<ref>This is a common citation in this context. It should be recognized that Vermont was not among the original 13 states. The land which 'Vermont' claimed was also claimed by New York. Vermont did not become the 14th state until the State of New York allowed that to happen. In that context, 'Vermont' was not a legitimate legal entity before 1791.</ref>
*1783: [[Massachusetts Supreme Court]] rules slavery illegal based on the 1780 [[Constitution of Massachusetts]]. Slavery ended in Massachusetts by the time of the census in 1790.
**[[Maine]] was part of Massachusetts in 1783 and entered the Union as a free state in 1820. 
*1783: [[New Hampshire]] Constitution contains a bill of rights that is interpreted as ending slavery. In 1857, a law was approved that formally prohibited slavery.
*1784: [[Connecticut]] begins a gradual abolition of slavery. A law was approved in 1848 that freed any remaining slaves.
*1784: [[Rhode Island]] begins a gradual abolition of slavery.
*1791: Vermont enters the Union as a free state.
*1799: [[New York State]] begins a gradual abolition of slavery. A law was approved in 1817 that freed all remaining slaves on July 4, 1827.
*1804: [[New Jersey]] begins a gradual abolition of slavery.

New Jersey's gradual abolition law freed future children at birth, but male children of enslaved women could be held until age twenty-five and females until age twenty-one. Those enslaved before passage of the 1804 law remained enslaved for life. The last vestiges of slavery remained in New Jersey until December 6, 1865, when ratification of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] ended slavery in the United States. New Jersey's legislature did not approve the Thirteenth Amendment until February 1866, two months after it had been ratified by three-fourths of the states.

==See also==
*[[History of slavery in Pennsylvania]]
*[[Abolition of slavery timeline]]

==External links==
*((cite web |url= http://www.slavenorth.com/penna.htm
|title= Slavery in the North |author= Douglas Harper |year= 2003 |access-date=22 January 2010))

==References==
((Reflist))

((DEFAULTSORT:Gradual Abolition of Slavery, An Act for the))
[[Category:Abolitionism in Pennsylvania]]
[[Category:African-American documents]]
[[Category:Legal history of Pennsylvania]]
[[Category:United States slavery law]]
[[Category:1780 in law]]
[[Category:1780 in Pennsylvania]]

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