Not until 1696 did a large number of Pennsylvania Quakers object to slavery. However, many Quaker leaders held on to their slaves until the Revolutionary War. Craftsmen who had invested time and money training their slaves opposed emancipation because they would suffer a substantial loss of property. Quaker-owned slaves worked principally on farms, but also took on a diversity of chores in the retail trades. The Pennsylvania iron industry used large numbers of slaves to operate furnaces and perform other manual labor jobs. In 1761 the Quaker population of Philadelphia was 12.8 percent, but they still owned nearly 17 percent of the slaves in that city.

Pennsylvania preceded the federal government in outlawing the slave trade with the passage of the Gradual Abolition Act in 1780, which decreed that all children born after the passage of the law were free, and that black children born earlier would be freed when they turned 28. Despite the passage of this law, the statute was seldom enforced. The U.S. census listed 64 slaves in Pennsylvania as late as 1840.

Sixteen years after the first slave ship arrived in Pennsylvania colonial legislators officially recognized the institution of slavery. In 1700, a statute was passed noting how slave criminals were to be prosecuted and sentenced. Murder, robbery and rape all commanded a death sentence. Attempted rape of a white woman by a black man was punished with castration. Miscegenation was of particular concern to lawmakers. A petition filed in 1723 asking the assembly to "do something concerning the intermarriages of Negroes and whites" resulted in a statute prohibiting such marriages. Manumission fell into disfavor during the 1700s as white leaders sought to control and restrict the rights of free blacks. A 1726 statute declared that free black children not raised properly could be removed from their parents and indentured until the child reached adulthood.

Although advertisements offering rewards for the capture of runaway slaves were frequently found in Pennsylvania newspapers, the state passed a law in 1847 forbidding state officials from enforcing the 1793 federal fugitive slave law. Slaveholders were denied the right to transport their slaves through the state, and any slaves brought into the state by their holders would be considered free. By 1860, professional slave-catchers could be fined as much as $1,000 and subject to a prison sentence up to three months.

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

Nash, Garry B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Purdon's Digest, 1700-1861. Philadelphia: Law Publishers, 1862.

Reiss, Oscar. Blacks in Colonial America. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers, 1997.

Pennsylvania slave names:
http://www.afrolumens.org/slavery

TYPE	YEAR	LAWS/CODES	DESCRIPTION
Slavery legalized	1700	Statute	Statutory recognition given to slavery.
Penal Code	1700	Statute	Blacks could be tried in courts presided over by two justices of the peace and six freeholders. The death sentence was meted out for murder, robbery, or rape. The penalty for attempted rape of a white woman was castration. An enslaved black convicted of stealing was whipped. Blacks were not permitted to carry firearms without a license.
Alcohol/ Firearms	1721	Statute	Prohibited the sale of liquor to blacks without the permission of their masters. They were also prohibited from firing guns without permission.
Miscegenation	1722	Resolution	Assembly condemned the "wicked and scandalous practice of blacks cohabiting with white people."
Miscegenation	1723	Petition	Philadelphians petitioned the colonial Assembly to take action against intermarriages between whites and blacks.
Miscegenation, Travel, Commerce	1726	Statute	Racial intermarriage prohibited. In addition, blacks not permitted to go more than ten miles from their homes without a written pass. Blacks had to be off city streets by 9 p.m. No more than four blacks could congregate in one place. A decree also prohibited masters from hiring out their slaves.
Manumission	1726	Statute	Manumission made more difficult. A 30 pound security bond had to be posted for each black freed. Decrees against freedmen were also passed by the assembly. Vagrant free blacks could be bound out as indentured servants, and free blacks could not own slaves. A black could be sold back into slavery if he married a white woman. If authorities believed that black children were not being raised properly, justices of the peace could bind out the children of free blacks without their parents' permission until males reached the age of 24 and females were 21.
Unlawful assembly	1732	Municipal	Philadelphia prohibited black "tumults," characterized as parties, funerals and church services, on Sundays and in the courthouse square at night. This law was restated in 1738 and 1741.
Emancipation	1780	Statute	The Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 decreed that no child born after passage of the statute was a slave. Black and mulatto children would be servants until the age of 28. A number of other regulations involving blacks were also included in the act. All blacks had to be registered; owners of slaves were liable for their support; blacks would be tried in courts like others; the jury would put a value on a slave in a sentence of death in order to compensate the master; the reward to enslaved blacks who captured runaways would be the same as for white servants. Only those blacks registered by their owners would be considered slaves except runaways from other states; blacks taken from the state could be brought back and registered; and no black or mulatto other than infants could be bound for indenture for more than seven years. Masters could not separate husbands, wives, and children. Penalties were noted for taking blacks or mulattoes out of the state. To safeguard blacks from out of state slave catchers, emancipated blacks were given "freedom papers." To protect blacks from having their papers stolen or destroyed, registries for these papers were established.
Runaways	1821	Statute	Blacks charged as fugitives to be given a more formal trial. Prohibited justices of the peace and aldermen from officiating in such cases.
Runaways	1847	Statute	A "personal liberty" law was passed forbidding state officials from aiding in the enforcement of the 1793 Federal fugitive slave law and prohibited the use of state jails in such cases. Slaveholders were denied the right to transport their slaves through the state. Enslaved blacks brought into the state by their owners were considered free.
Runaways	1860	Statute	The punishment for unlawful seizure of fugitive slaves was a fine up to $1,000 and imprisonment up to three months.
Kidnapping	1860	Statute	The punishment for the kidnapping of any free black with the intention of selling him was a fine up to $2,000 and imprisonment up to 12 years.