After Freedom

The manumitting sentiment that overtook many, albeit a minority, of Pennsylvania’s slaveholders in the 1780s and 1790s led to the release from bondage of hundreds of slaves. The desire of slaveholders to be quit of the system of bondage, however, did not mean that their need for cheap labor and a flexible system for obtaining it had diminished. In an expanding late eighteenthcentury economy, both rural and urban Pennsylvanians sought a dependable, convenient, and inexpensive labor force—always the goal of employers.

Economics · Labour economics · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Race, History, and American Society