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Manumission Societies
2 articles on Manumission Societies
Manumission Societies
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 1341 Includes: BibliographyBetween the Revolutionary War and 1830 manumission societies were the main organizations fighting to end slavery in the United States. These groups, founded and led by white, mostly Quaker, men, grew out of the antislavery fervor that had emerged slowly among Quakers in the pre–Revolutionary War era. After the war manumission societies used pamphlets, newspaper articles, court cases, and petitions to state legislatures to accelerate support for ending slavery in the northern states. Manumission societies in the Northeast were crucial to the implementation of the gradual abolition of slavery in all northern states by 1827. In the South, manumission societies maintained a strong antislavery presence until cotton led southerners to wholeheartedly recommit to slavery in the early 1800s. For much of the late eighteenth century, in fact, there were ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 425 Includes: BibliographyEighteenth-century antislavery organizations that advocated the gradual emancipation of slaves through legislation. Manumission societies emerged after the American Revolution (1775–1783) as advocates for an end to the slave trade and for the gradual abolition of slavery. Manumission, which entailed the formal release of a slave, was the most common path to freedom, and it could occur either privately, by an individual slave owner, or officially, by state law.The Pennsylvania Abolition Society, formed in 1775 by the Quakers, is considered the first manumission society. On the eve of the American Civil War (1861–1865), an estimated 154 manumission societies existed throughout the United States; 130 of those were located in the South. The membership and policies of these societies varied dramatically. For example, slave owners who expressed a desire ...
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