Page 170 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Read the Document Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, and Moral (1772) 6.1

6.2

6.3

6.4

phiLLis wheatLey This engraving of Wheatley appeared in her volume of verse, Poems on Various Subjects,
Religious and Moral (1773), the first book published by an African American.

In states north of Virginia, the abolition of slavery took different forms. Even
before achieving statehood in 1791, Vermont drafted a constitution (1777) that pro-
hibited slavery. In 1780, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law for gradual emanci-
pation. Although the Massachusetts assembly refused to address the issue directly, the
state courts liberated its African Americans. A judge ruled slavery unconstitutional
in Massachusetts because it conflicted with a clause in the state bill of rights declaring
“all men . . . free and equal.” According to one enthusiast, this decision freed “a Grate
number of Blacks . . . who . . . are held in a state of slavery within the bowels of a free
and christian Country.” By 1800, slavery was on the road to extinction in the northern
states.
These positive developments did not mean that white people accepted blacks as
equals. In the very states that outlawed slavery, African Americans faced systematic
discrimination. Free blacks were generally excluded from voting, juries, and militia
duty—they were denied rights and responsibilities associated with full citizenship.
They rarely enjoyed access to education. In cities such as Philadelphia and New York,
where African Americans went to look for work, they ended up living in segregated
wards or neighborhoods. Even in the churches—institutions that had often attacked

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