# Slavery in the Northern States
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 18, 2002, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509 "2002-08-18T22:53:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2002, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/1 "2002-08-18T22:53:22Z")
I can see how big business might be in favor, but I think it’s a bad idea, both on moral and practical grounds.
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [August 18, 2002, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/2 "2002-08-18T23:59:09Z")
friggin’ hamsters!
grumble, grumble, grumble
Here’s what I thought I posted:
I’ve been doing a bit of reading recently about slavery, and I’m wondering what the status of slavery in the northern states was in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. I know that some Union states, like Maryland, were nonetheless slave states.
So, how prevalent was slavery in the north? Were there some colonies/states that never allowed slavery? Or was slavery originally present in all of the 13 colonies, but gradually abolished in the north? In the states that did have slavery but abolished it prior to the 13th Amendment, how was it abolished? State statutes abolishing it? state constitutional amendments?
Any comments, or pointers to texts/websites, would be appreciated.
Thanks.
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/3 "2002-08-19T00:11:25Z")
Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri, and the District of Columbia all allowed slavery and none of them joined the Confederacy.
Actually Missouri had two governments, but officially (and the winners get to decide what’s official), Missouri never left.
I’m not sure if there were slaves in West Virginia.
The New England states were the first to abolish slavery and it slowly worked its way through most of the North.
I have an old history textbook with a map about this topic
I will try to summarize it:
1777 - Vermont - State Constitution
1780 - Massachusetts - State Constitution (by extension Maine)
1780 - Pennsylvania - Statute (gradual)
1783 - New Hampshire - Constitution
1784- Rhode Island - Statute (gradual)
1784 - Connecticut - Statute (gradual)
1799 - New York - Statute (gradual)
1804 - New Jersey - Statute (gradual)
The 1787 Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in that area. That accounts for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota.
Other states handled as needed. Usually resulting in a long, drawn out argument.
See “War, Civil”
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### Author:  [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/4 "2002-08-19T00:27:43Z")
[This page](http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog10/feature/index_text.html) gives a summary of the progression of abolition in the North. Pretty much all of the 13 colonies allowed for slavery at one point, but north of the Mason-Dixon line (the Pennsylvania-Maryland border), slavery began to be abolished around the time of the American Revolution. (See [here](http://www.afrolumens.org/slavery/gradual.html) for the text of one of the “gradual emancipation acts” mentioned, the Pennsylvania Act of 1780. These acts frequently meant that slowly diminishing numbers of slaves remained in some Northern states right up until the eve of the Civil War.)
States beyond the original 13 colonies were admitted as slave states or free states.
Kentucky and Missouri were slave states which did not officially secede, but pro-secessionist conventions led to representatives from those states being seated in the Confederate Congress. Maryland had as many free blacks as slaves; nonetheless, Lincoln imposed martial law to ensure the state did not secede (which would have basically taken Washington, D.C. into the Confederacy). Delaware had few slaves by 1860, and there were more free blacks than slaves there by a wide margin.
As part of Virginia, slavery was legal in what became West Virginia; however, the mountainous region had never had as many slaves as the plantation-dominated lowlands to the east. (There were similar pockets of pro-Unionist sentiment in mountainous, non-plantation-dominated parts of other seceding states as well.) When West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the war in order to remain in the Union, its constitution provided for gradual emancipation, which was of course superseded by the 13th Amendment to the federal constitution.
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### Author:  [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/5 "2002-08-19T00:33:42Z")
Slavery was present in all 13 colonies. There were fewer slaves in the northern colonies. This was due to economics, not moral standards, though a few religious groups, like the Quakers objected to slavery. Plantation agriculture never took hold in the north the way it did in the southern colonies (kind of hard to grow rice and tobacco in Conneticut, no?), so slavery was not as economically profitable. This economic divide grew wider as the 18th century progressed. The introduction of the cotton gin in 1793 increased the demand for slaves in the South and increased the growth of large cotton plantations.
As time progressed, the northern states passed gradual emancipation acts. In 1780, Pennsylvania became the first state to pass a gradual emancipation act. It (and other states’ GEAs were fairly similar) stated that
1. There would be no more slave trading/importation of slaves for sale into Pennsylvania.
2. All children born to slaves would be free, but would have to work for their parents’ masters until they were 28. People who were already enslaved remained slaves for the rest of their lives. (This is the gradual part, see?)
3. Slave owners could not sell their slaves to people in other states to avoid the act. This was largely unenforced, and most slaves that would have been affected by the act were sold to southern slave owners. In 1790, the majority of slaves in the U.S. lived in Virginia and Maryland.
It remained perfectly legal to own slaves in northern states, but you couldn’t legally buy or sell them there and presumably their children would be free under the gradual emancipation acts. Dred Scott, for example, was a slave from Missouri who lived in Minnesota Territory with his owner for a number of years. Even though slavery was illegal in the northern territories as a result of the Missouri compromise, the Supreme Court ruled that Scott was still a slave.
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### Author:  [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/6 "2002-08-19T00:34:57Z")
Well, mostly beaten to the punch…
It’s probably also worth mentioning that Kansas was admitted as a free state only after having fought what amounted to a low-grade civil war within the state at the close of the 1850’s, complete with rival proslavery and antislavery territorial governments, proslovery and antislavery forces trying to “pack” the territory with immigrants, and a fair amount of actual bloodshed–sort of the Spanish Civil War of the American Civil War.
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### Author:  [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/7 "2002-08-19T01:14:27Z")
1862 - District of Columbia - act of Congress
The slave trade had been abolished in DC in 1850. It was this impending occurence which led citizens of what would become Arlington County, VA to vote for reunion with Virginia in 1846. You will recall that originally both Maryland and Virginia contributed land to the capital.
As per your request for links, [here](http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm009.html) is a slavery code book from that period in DC.
There is also, of course, the Dred Scott case, which “resolved” the issue of slaves’ status while in non-slave states. The background reveals that long before this case was heard, a distinction could be made between the law and prevailing practice.
> [@](#):
>
> _from [PBS](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2932.html)_
> **Scott was subsequently bought by army surgeon Dr. John Emerson, who later took Scott to the free state of Illinois. In the spring of 1836, after a stay of two and a half years, Emerson moved to a fort in the Wisconsin Territory, taking Scott along. While there, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, a slave owned by a local justice of the peace.**
I now see that **burundi** has concluded from the Dred Scott story that it had been legal to own slaves in the Northwest Territory. I went back to check the original text, wherein we find
> [@](#):
>
> _Northwest Ordinance_
> **Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.**
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### Author:  [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/8 "2002-08-19T01:39:38Z")
I forgot to mention, upon the freeing of DC slaves, owners were reimbursed for the value, as determined by a Baltimore slave dealer hired for this purpose.
And the Northwest Ordinance only applied to the Territory and subsequent territories carved out of it. States presumably had the ability to change the rules themselves, so **burundi** could be correct in specific NWT states, although I doubt that was the case prior to the Dred Scott ruling.
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### Author:  [@Cessandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cessandra)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/9 "2002-08-19T03:03:16Z")
A slight aside:
I am constantly hearing about how Lincoln owned slaves. If slavery was illegal in Illinois and DC, how could that be possible?
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/10 "2002-08-19T05:00:19Z")
Lincoln never owned slaves. The closest accurate story to that would be that the wife of U.S. Grant was a slave-owner at the time they married, although her slaves were later freed.
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### Author:  [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/11 "2002-08-19T05:02:16Z")
Lincoln originally lived in Kentucky. While I don’t believe he ever had the resources to be a slaveholder, I’ll bet his wife owned a few, which technically became “his” when they were married. They probably never left Kentucky.
Either that or it was just an UL made up at the tiem to undermine Lincoln’s position on extending slavery westward.
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### Author:  [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/12 "2002-08-19T05:21:51Z")
Lincoln? Who the hell is spreading that crap? Lincoln was opposed to slavery ever since he was old enough to go outside by himself.
Maybe people are confusing him with Washington or Jefferson…?
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/13 "2002-08-19T05:43:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by saoirse \*
> Lincoln originally lived in Kentucky. While I don’t believe he ever had the resources to be a slaveholder, I’ll bet his wife owned a few, which technically became “his” when they were married. They probably never left Kentucky.
Lincoln’s family moved to Indiana when he was 7 and then to Illinois when he was 21. He married somewhat later after he’d established his Illinois law practice.
Mary Todd Lincoln was the daughter of a businessman in Lexington KY. It’s likely that he owned slaves as the servants of his house. However, I doubt that Mary actually owned any of the slaves herself.
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/14 "2002-08-19T14:38:35Z")
Great information - thanks, everyone.
So, to summarise, slavery was legally permitted in all 13 of the original colonies.
Of the 13, seven either had abolished it around the time the Constitution was adopted, or were on the road to doing so (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey).
Of the remaining 6 original states that retained slavery, two stayed with the Union (Maryland and Delaware), and four went with the Confederacy (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia).
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/15 "2002-08-19T14:40:05Z")
With respect to Lincoln, didn’t the federal government use slaves to staff the White House? That may be a garbled source of the rumour.
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### Author:  [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/16 "2002-08-19T15:10:40Z")
[According to the White House Historical Association](http://www.whitehousehistory.org/04_history/subs_timeline/c_africans/frame_c_1860.html), while some presidents had brought their personal slaves to Washington, there were no “federal slaves.” Most presidents preferred paid (white) servants. Slavery was abolished in DC in 1862.
> [@](#):
>
> During the Lincoln Administration some of Buchanan’s British-born domestic staff remained and other workers were brought from Illinois. There were no slaves as servants. Joining them in the White House, although she was not a member of the staff, was African American Elizabeth Keckley. She was a former slave and a talented seamstress who had bought her freedom and moved to Washington, D.C. where she established a dressmaking business. Keckley became Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress and eventually a close friend and confidante.
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### Author:  [@UrbanChic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UrbanChic)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/17 "2002-08-19T15:55:18Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by burundi \*
> **\ Plantation agriculture never took hold in the north the way it did in the southern colonies (kind of hard to grow rice and tobacco in Conneticut, no?), \**
Actually, the Connecticut Valley produces some of the best cigar wrapper leaves in the world.
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### Author:  [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2002, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/18 "2002-08-19T22:04:35Z")
Just to get in a little more here on slavery in the Northern States and its prohibition, the case of In the Matter of Ralph, 1 Morris 1 (Iowa Territory, 1839), was the first case decided by the Supreme Court of the Iowa Territory. Its fact were similar to the facts of the Dred Scott case decided by the US Sup Ct in 1857, in what was as obviously a politically motivated decision as this country had seen until the Florida election case that put G.W. Bush in the White House.
In the Iowa Territory case a black man born as a slave in Virginia was owned by a man living in Missouri. Missouri was a slave state by virtue of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Ralph had entered into a contract with his owner to buy his own freedom for $500 and Ralph removed to the lead mines at Dubuque to earn the money to pay off his contract. When Ralph failed to pay his owner sent “slave hunters” to Dubuque to arrest him and take him back to Missouri. On of the other Dubuque miners took out a writ of habeas corpus to prevent Ralph’s removal. Because of the case’s importance the trial was held before the Territorial Supreme Court instead of the local trial court.
The Territorial Supreme Court held that because Iowa had been part of the Wisconsin Territory and because the Wisconsin Territory’s organic statute was the Northwest Ordinance which prohibited slavery, and because the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery north of Missouri’s southern border (except for Missouri its self), the Iowa Territory was free territory and Ralph’s residence here with his owner’s consent rendered Ralph a free man and not subject to being taken back to slavery. The principal was followed in later Iowa decisions (although ignored by Justice Tanny in the Dred Scott case). The first Iowa State Constitution of 1846, on which Iowa was admitted to the Union that winter, prohibited slavery. Iowa was the first free State carved out of the Louisiana Territory.
We Iowans have little to brag about. Please allow us to do so on this point.
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### Author:  [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2002, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/19 "2002-08-20T02:03:16Z")
Just to get in a little more here on slavery in the Northern States, the case of _In the Matter of Ralph_, 1 Morris 1 (Iowa Territory, 1839), was the first case decided by the Supreme Court of the Iowa Territory. Its fact were similar to the facts of the Dred Scott case decided by the US Sup Ct in 1857, in what was as obviously a politically motivated decision as this country had seen until the Florida election case that put G.W. Busch in the White House.
In the Iowa Territory case a black man born as a slave in Virginia was owned by a man living in Missouri. Missouri was a slave state by virtue of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Ralph had entered into a contract with his owner to buy his own freedom for $500 and Ralph removed to the lead mines at Dubuque to earn the money to pay off his contract. When Ralph failed to pay his owner sent “slave hunters” to Dubuque to arrest him and take him back to Missouri. On of the other Dubuque miners took out a writ of habeas corpus to prevent Ralph’s removal. Because of the case’s importance the trial was held before the Territorial Supreme Court instead of the local trial court.
The Territorial Supreme Court held that because Iowa had been part of the Wisconsin Territory and because the Wisconsin Territory’s organic statute was the Northwest Ordinance which prohibited slavery, and because the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery north of Missouri’s southern border (except for Missouri its self), the Iowa Territory was free territory and Ralph’s residence here with his owner’s consent rendered Ralph a free man and not subject to being taken back to slavery. The principal was followed in later Iowa decisions (although ignored by Justice Tanny in the Dred Scott case). The first Iowa State Constitution of 1846, on which Iowa was admitted to the Union that winter, prohibited slavery. Iowa was the first free State carved out of the Louisiana Territory.
We Iowans have little enough to gloat about; let us have this one.
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### Author:  [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2002, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slavery-in-the-northern-states/124509/20 "2002-08-20T02:04:29Z")
Sorry! Double post.
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