Having Become Free by the Law of 1780

Abstract

I n November of 1794, an enslaved woman named Pegg requested assistance from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS), an exclusively white abolition organization, in securing her freedom. Pegg and her slaveholder, Phillip Ruby, had moved to Pennsylvania from North Carolina six years earlier. After their first three years in the state, Ruby organized an indentured servitude contract with Pegg, agreeing to free her after 14 additional years of service. Pegg served three years of the indenture during which she discovered that she was legally free. In 1780, Pennsylvania ratified “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” also referred to as the “Gradual Abolition Act.” Among its stipulations, the law required slaveholders coming into the state to indenture their enslaved people within six months of their arrival. Because Phillip Ruby did not indenture Pegg within the first six months, the law granted her freedom. With her newfound knowledge Pegg, “now having arrived to her 19th or 20th year of age & being married” contacted the PAS and “apply’d for release” from her contract. The fact that Pegg’s status as a married womanwas detailedwithin the generally succinct PAS meeting minutes suggests that the relationship was perhaps a significant factor motivating Pegg to pursue her freedom claim. A marriage without the confines of forced labor would have been worth the risk. The organization supported her claim noting that “the girl having become free by the operation of the Law of 1780” should have her liberty. PAS lawyers then pursued her case, using the courts to enforce the abolition law, and secured her freedom. By actively applying for assistance from the organization, Pegg resisted both her oppressor and the institution of slavery. Her case was just one example in the larger story of Black resistance and agency in the late eighteenth century. Her story was far from uncommon. And as was the case with Pegg, many people of African descent actively solicited the help of PAS staff members, fostering interracial allyship, to claim their freedom and the freedom of loved ones. As historians increasingly work to uncover Black voices and activism, the cases of the PAS provide rich windows into Black agency during the Early Republic. This study utilizes the Papers of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society to examine how Black men and women fought for their liberty between 1784, when the PAS began its large-scale efforts to aid people of African descent, through the turn of the century. Investigating their struggles also provides insight into the many complexities of freedom in the decades immediately following the American Revolution. Though limited, PAS records reveal a Black population, enslaved and free, committed to securing and maintaining freedom. Between 1784, when the organization reorganized, and the end of the century, the PAS pursued hundreds of cases, many of which were the result of Black claimants actively seeking help from the