Pennsylvania: An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery

Audience

This act was aimed at the people of Pennsylvania. Slave owners needed to understand that if they wanted to hold on to their slaves, they had to fulfill all of the requirements of the new statute. Judges and lawyers needed to understand just what those requirements were. In addition, like the Declaration of Independence, this act was aimed at a larger public opinion. The preamble, in particular, was an appeal to “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” and was designed to convince Americans as well as Europeans that slavery was wrong and that the people of Pennsylvania took seriously the ideology of the American Revolution. In a sense, the first two paragraphs of the law provide an answer to Samuel Johnson's query “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” In Pennsylvania, the demands for liberty were now coming from people who would no longer tolerate slavery.