Talk:Gradual emancipation (United States)

Text seems in need of clarification. “Once the Pennsylvania residents were freed, they were supposed to be treated the same as indentured servants who were contracted for four years of service. For instance, they were to receive tools of their trade or other privileges.” You must mean SLAVES who were Pennsylvania residents, right? The significance of receiving tools is not clear. Do you mean that indentured servants were usually given the tools of their trades upon completion of their servitude and so too were slaves who were freed? Neither the best nor the only benefit of freedom, I would hope. “…because there was increasing support for emancipation in the north and slaves helped the Confederates during the war.” This is almost a non sequitur. I appreciate conciseness, but more words are needed for clarification in this instance. The situation in New England was that each state had a different approach to ending slavery. Massachusetts, with which I am most familiar, never passed a law abolishing slavery gradually, but rather, several slaves there petitioned the courts arguing that slavery was against the state constitution, basically asking the court to interpret the constitution as saying that slavery was already illegal. The courts ruled in favor of this interpretation of the constitution (which explicitly declared that "All men are created free and equal."), with the result that slavery lost its viability because any slave who petitioned the court for freedom was likely to get it. Slavery consequently died out, and not particularly gradually. Milesnfowler (talk) 04:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I should have quoted the Massachusetts constitution as saying that "All men are BORN free and equal." There was a sublime conspiracy between the lawyers for the slaves who sued their masters for their freedom, and a concern they had was that, since the wording of the constitution said "men," the judges might take the word literally and say that a female slave could not win her freedom because she was not a man. So they asked the female slave(s) not to bring their case(s) first. (I only know of one female slave but there might have been another or others.) After the male slaves won their freedom, however, the female slave, Mum Bet of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, was able to win her freedom. She changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman. Her former master offered her a job as a servant, but she turned him down because his wife had been mean to her and other slaves. She instead took a job as a servant in the household of her lawyer. She is buried in his family cemetery, the only black person interred there. Milesnfowler (talk) 05:25, 8 July 2023 (UTC)