Perhaps in no other state did the ideals espoused during the American Revolution take hold as much as they did in Pennsylvania. The gradual emancipation act was just one example of Pennsylvanians attempting to follow through on Revolutionary promises but trying to abolish slavery outright was very difficult. The Pennsylvania legislature, however, suggested a gradual freeing of slaves over a span of time.   This plan would free slaves but give plantation owners and slaveholders the chance to slowly adapt. 

The problem was that it was monetarily more expedient to buy slaves for life than to pay wages to workers. Slaves were simply a very good investment. It would cost approximately $10/day or $3,800 a year to hire a common laborer.  On the other hand, a typical slaves might cost $1,000 – $2,000 up front but would provide a lifetime of labor. This is why abolishing slavery was so difficult.  The situation is similar to our current global warming crisis.  Everyone knows burning fossil fuels is bad but its far cheaper than the alternatives so everyone balks and switching.  Similarly, in the 1780’s everyone knew slavery was horrible but they perpetuated it because goods produced by slaves were cheaper than those produced by wage earning freemen. 

The first successful move to free slaves was the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery which was passed by Pennsylvania legislature on March 1, 1780. The Act did not attack the rights of slave-owners, and those currently in slavery were not freed by the act but it did accomplish a few advances toward the elimination of slavery in the state:

• All persons born in the state of Pennsylvania after the act was passed are no longer slaves or “lifelong servants of any kind.”  This ended chattel slavery in Pennsylvania.  No longer were the children of slaves automatically the property of their slaveholder, but
• Even though these children were not “slaves”, they are required to remain in the service of their owners as an indentured servant or apprentice until that child is 28 years old.   This allowed for the slaveholder to recoup the costs of supporting the children of their slaves.  Slave-owners were required to register their slaves annually, names ages, and etc. in order to enforce that the slaves would be freed at age 28 and to keep track of which ones had already been freed. If owners failed to register their slaves, they would have to free them by default.
• Freed slaves were protected from ever being enslaved again.  It also allowed for slaves who had run away and been missing for more than 5 years to be freed.  While the slave-holder was allowing owners to recover slaves during this time period, once they had been gone for 5 years, they could not be again enslaved. 
• Slaves could not be imported into Pennsylvania.  Visitors to the state could bring their slaves but could only keep them for 6 months after which they would be freed. Some people took advantage of this section by carefully not staying longer than 6 months, leaving, and coming back even though the practice was expressly prohibited.
• Indenture contracts could not be extended without court approval regardless of laws of other states in which the original indenture may have been enacted.

Connecticut and Rhode Island passed similar gradual emancipation laws in 1784. New York and New Jersey, each of which had an enslaved population of well over 10,000 after the Revolution, initially resisted acting against slavery. However, by 1799 in New York and 1804 in New Jersey, gradual emancipation laws had been enacted. In 1780, when the Massachusetts Constitution went into effect, slavery was legal in the Commonwealth but by 1783 three cases were brought before the Supreme Judicial Court which applied the principle of judicial review to abolish slavery arguing that slavery was incompatible with the new state constitution.  By the turn of the 19th century, slavery was well on the road to extinction in the North.  No states south of Pennsylvania took these measures making the Mason-Dixon Line[i] the de facto border between slave holding states and emancipated states.

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[i] The Mason–Dixon line was originally surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon as part of the resolution of a border dispute involving Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware in the colonial United States. The dispute had its origins almost a century earlier in the somewhat confusing proprietary grants by King Charles I to Lord Baltimore (Maryland), and by his son King Charles II to William Penn.  It was never intended to have any bearing on the issue of slavery in America.

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