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The Pennsylvania Abolition Society: Restoring a Group to Glory by Richard S FEATURE The Pennsylvania Abolition Society: Restoring a Group to Glory By Richard S. Newman “ t is the nature of great events to obscure the great events that came before them,” the noted 19th-century historian Francis Parkman once wrote. There is no need to tell that to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS). Once the leading abolitionist organization in the world, the PAS was eclipsed by a more radical (and media-conscious) brand of abolitionism in the years leading to the Civil War. IEveryone knows those abolitionists: William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child. Just a couple of generations ago scholars thought these Top of Page: Old Rising Sun Tavern, birthplace of ultraradical reformers even caused the Civil War! And the PAS. Watercolor by David Kennedy. what of the PAS? It rates barely a mention even in Background: Excerpt from draft of an antislavery textbooks dedicated to the struggle against slavery. memorial to Congress from the PAS, Feb. 3, Rich Newman teaches at Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the author of The Transformation 1790, signed by PAS president Benjamin of American Abolitionism (2002) and a forthcoming book, Black Founder: Richard Allen, African Franklin. PAS Papers. Americans and the Early Republic. 1775 The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage (Pennsylvania Abolition Society) founded. Meetings suspended in November. 1780 PA legislature enacts law for the gradual abolition of slavery. 6 Pennsylvania LEGACIES November 2005 The Pennsylvania Abolition Society: Restoring a Group to Glory This omission is truly Benjamin Franklin. Society Portrait After Franklin’s death in unfortunate. For the PAS was not Collection. 1790, the group continued only the first abolition society to raise abolitionist anywhere in the western world, it has 2,000 members consciousness. The remained active ever since its would officially PAS wrote to and organization in 1775. Now that is join the PAS, and dealt with reformers dedication to the cause of racial many more in Britain, France, justice. But longevity is only one reformers would and Jamaica, as well reason to look again at the PAS, for express sympathy as American the group not only helped secure and with its motives. governors, protect abolitionist laws in While men of congressmen, and Pennsylvania during America’s standing joined the jurists. It forwarded revolutionary years but its members group—from copies of the group’s consistently attacked slavery in an America’s leading constitution, abolitionist age when many American statesmen doctor (Benjamin Rush) laws and legal opinions, and hoped to avoid the sensitive and to its leading jurist (William antislavery essays to virtually divisive issue. Silence on slavery is Rawle)—so too did tailors, middling anyone who could help the cause. golden, George Washington observed merchants, and candlemakers. British reformer Granville Sharp when Pennsylvania abolitionists No one offers a better glimpse wrote that he felt a “deep sense . issued the first antislavery petitions to into the hopes of PAS activists than of obligation to the PAS for the Congress in 1790. America is better Poor Richard himself. A former honour . they confer upon me by than that, the PAS constantly replied. northern slaveholder, Ben Franklin enrolling my name in the number of In the words of famed black minister became PAS president in 1787 and their corresponding members.” As its Richard Allen, the PAS was “the helped it gain official incorporation contact list illustrated, the PAS was friend of those who hath no helper.” by the state in 1789—giving particularly keen on gaining the Roughly a decade after it first abolitionism the standing of, say, a support of governing elites. gathered in 1775 at the Rising Sun bank. As Temple University scholar Inside the Quaker state, the PAS Tavern, the PAS made Philadelphia David Waldstreicher has brilliantly remained vigilant against attempts to the worldwide capital of the burgeoning abolitionist movement. The PAS’s first incarnation . the PAS made Philadelphia the comprised a small group of men who worldwide capital of the burgeoning wanted to expand Quaker attacks on slavery. Quaker-style abolitionism abolitionist movement. (not to mention the consciousness- raising tactics of an Anthony Benezet shown, Franklin accommodated to rescind Pennsylvania’s gradual or John Woolman) offered a model slavery for most of his life. Yet abolition law—the first of its kind in for all Americans. After a lull during Franklin also came to see the western world. Passed in 1780, the Revolution (and Benezet’s death), abolitionism as part of a momentous the law promised slavery’s gradual the PAS was revived. change sweeping through western demise in Pennsylvania: all slaves In the magical year of 1787, just society. Slavery, Franklin knew by born after that date would be free at as American leaders gathered in the the 1780s, was a dirty word. His age 28. While it is easy to harrumph City of Brotherly Love to form a voluminous papers tell the tale of his now at this half-way measure, it was more perfect union, the PAS transformation. For much of his life, a model for black as well as white reorganized itself to give new energy “abolition” had nothing whatsoever activists in its time. Indeed, no to American abolitionism. As liberty to do with racial slavery. Franklin sooner had the law taken shape than loving Americans and Christians, the initially used the word when fugitive slaves and kidnapped free group’s constitution told the world, referring to things like colonial fears African Americans would try to the PAS’s members would “use such that England would abolish trial by make it to “free” Pennsylvania. Here means as are in their power to jury. After Franklin joined the PAS, was the true beginning of American extend the blessings of freedom to however, he used “abolition” only in sectionalism. And the PAS was in the every part of the human race.” reference to battling bondage. And middle of it all. Antislavery talk was nice—but he excitedly wrote to friends around The group’s abolitionist strategy abolitionist action all the better. Over the world about the wonders of the rested on twin pillars: petitioning the next several decades, nearly PAS. and legal work. For decades, the 1784 PAS reactivated. 1787 Richard Allen and Absalom Jones found the Free African Society. November 2005 Pennsylvania LEGACIES 7 The Pennsylvania Abolition Society: Restoring a Group to Glory group’s pestering petitions asked with great success. If a slave fled to The early 19th century proved state and national governments to Pennsylvania and had children to be an era of transformation both protect free African Americans, there, the PAS challenged the for the PAS and American curtail the domestic trade, ban master’s right to the kids—again, abolitionism. By the 1820s, the overseas slave trading, and strike at with much success. Such legal institution of slavery had grown slavery in the District of Columbia. battles did not stop slavery from impressively in the South and “[We] have observed with great growing, but they sure upset many Southwest, offsetting the passage of Satisfaction,” the group’s first southern slaveholders. gradual abolition laws in every federal petition told Congress, “that The PAS had a complex northern state. And slavery—from many important & salutary Powers relationship with Pennsylvania’s free its role in cotton and sugar are vested in you for ‘promoting the black community. On the one hand, cultivation to the traffic in enslaved Welfare & securing the blessings of liberty to the People of the United States.’” Why not make that statement ring true “without distinction of Color”? The federal government, in short, should be in the business of promoting abolitionism. That notion was none too popular, even in the 1790s. The PAS memorial was essentially shelved, but not before Georgians and South Carolinians excoriated Pennsylvania abolitionists. Years later, on the eve of secession, one Georgia disunionist would recall that abolitionist agitation of the federal government dated to that first Congress with those pesky Pennsylvania activists. Legal work remains one of the most undervalued facets of the PAS’s activities. Above: Opinion of William Rawle in the case of the slave Kitty, 1815. Kitty From the 1780s escaped from slavery in Virginia in about 1808 and had three children born in onward, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania. Rawle wrote in favor of the freedom of her children. PAS Papers. abolitionists ran the Left: William Rawle. Lithograph from a portrait painted by order most important legal- of the Bar of Philadelphia. Society Portrait Collection. aid system for endangered African it rendered people themselves—formed a critical Americans anywhere. True, important aid by part of a growing American Pennsylvania reformers finding apprentice- economy. What would Pennsylvania believed that slave property ships for former abolitionists do now? Tactical had constitutional standing in slaves, opening schools, debates broke out within the group. southern states; one could not and even offering business loans to But the PAS eventually stayed its simply free all slaves. But PAS Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. course. Gradual abolitionism and a lawyers also believed that On the other hand, the PAS lawyerly chipping away at slavery’s abolitionists could manipulate remained a segregated organization margins were its past, present, and bondage via the law. If a Maryland until the 1830s. It never dawned on future. master gave his or her slave the group to ask black leaders to But a competitor soon emerged permission to visit family in “free” become fellow activists. For all of with a new answer to America’s Pennsylvania, and that enslaved the group’s incredibly innovative racial ills: colonization. The person refused to return to bondage, abolitionist activity, it would not colonization idea had been around the PAS took up the case—often innovate interracial activism.
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