Freedom by Degrees

Emancipation in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania and its Aftermath

Gary B Nash author Jean R Soderlund author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:25th Apr '91

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Freedom by Degrees cover

This book shows how slavery ended within a single generation at the end of the eighteenth century in the important colony/state of Pennsylvania. The authors have made a study of the slaveholders themselves in order to understand the process by which most slaves were given freedom without legislative or judicial efforts and without compensation to their masters. The book also traces a number of individual cases which show the varying processes by which slaves brought pressure for emancipation. This book represents a major milestone in our understanding of slavery and how it was effectively abolished.

Deserving of a prominent place beside the best of the southern volumes. Freedom By Degrees, based on a motherlode of documentation including probate and manumission records, abolitionist society papers, and runaway slave literature, masterfully delineates the forces that brought aout the gradual death of slavery in Pennsylvania and the subsequent transition to a semi-free black labor system....Cogent and sophisticated analysis. * Georgia Historical Quarterly *

ISBN: 9780195045833

Dimensions: 149mm x 238mm x 23mm

Weight: 526g

272 pages