We have now closed our notice of the efforts of Pennsylvania in behalf of the negroes, antecedent to the year 1770; and have shown, we trust, that our forefathers were active and ardent laborers in the righteous cause of human freedom and happiness. We propose, in a future essay, to exhibit the further history of our State, as connected with this subject, up to the present time.
The lamented writer reserved for another Memoir the history, subsequent to 1770, of slavery in Pennsylvania. "We do not propose to complete the task, yet believe our duty will not have been fulfilled without some further reference to the subject.
The good seed sown by the honest German Friends in 1688 did not perish, for what great truth ever has? The abolition of slavery continued to be agitated without, however, any immediate results. "What a peaceful policy could not effect was at last accomplished by the Revolution;[1] so then, as now, political convulsion hastened the development of events, that otherwise might have been a score of years in ripening. Thus is history ever repeating itself.
On the 9th of November, 1778, George Bryan, the Vice President, in his message called the attention of the Assembly to the subject, and said, "the late Assembly was furnished with the heads of a bill for manumitting infant negroes, born of slaves, by which the gradual abolition of servitude for life would be obtained in an easy mode. It is not proposed that the present slaves, most of whom are scarcely competent of freedom, should be meddled with, but all importations must be forbid, if the idea be adopted. This or some better scheme would tend to abrogate slavery, the opprobrium of America, from among us; and no period seems more happy for the attempt than the present, as the number of such unhappy characters, ever few in Pennsylvania, has been much reduced by the practices and plunder of our late invaders. In divesting the State of slaves you will equally serve the cause of humanity and policy, and offer to God one of the most proper and best returns of gratitude for his great deliverance of us and our posterity from thraldom: you will also set your
- ↑ Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed, by his grandson, William B. Reed, vol. ii., p. 173.
