Original State-based Abolition Efforts
Prior to the American Revolution, all of the British North American colonies had slavery, but the Revolutionary War gave impetus to a general anti-slavery sentiment. The Northwest Territory, now known as part of the Midwest, was organized under the Northwest Ordinance with a prohibition on slavery in 1787. Massachusetts accepted that its 1780 Constitution effectively abolished slavery, and several other northern states adopted statutes requiring gradual emancipation. In 1804, New Jersey became the last original state to embark on the course of gradual emancipation.
Read more about this topic: Slave And Free States
Famous quotes containing the words original, abolition and/or efforts:
“In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“I am gradually drifting to the opinion that this Rebellion can only be crushed finally by either the execution of all the traitors or the abolition of slavery. Crushed, I mean, so as to remove all danger of its breaking out again in the future.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Those great efforts of intellect, upon which the mind sometimes touches, are such that it cannot maintain itself there. It only leaps to them, not as upon a throne, forever, but merely for an instant.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)