the owner of the mother until twenty-one years of age, and only if
he abandoned his claims to the mother to become a charge to the
town. In New York and New Jersey they were to remain as servants
until a certain age, but were regarded as free, and liberal
opportunities were given the master for the abandonment of his
claims, the children in such cases to be supported at the common
charge.... The manumission and emancipation acts were naturally
followed, as in the case of the constitutional provision in Vermont,
by the attempts of some of the slave-owners to dispose of their
property outside the State. Amendments to the laws were found
necessary, and the Abolition Societies found plenty of occasion for
their exertions in protecting free blacks from seizure and illegal
sale and in looking after the execution and amendment of the laws.
The process of gradual emancipation was also unsatisfactory on
account of the length of time it would require, and in Pennsylvania
and Connecticut attempts were made to obtain acts for immediate
emancipation.


5. _Beginning of Racial Consciousness_

Of supreme importance in this momentous period, more important perhaps
in its ultimate effect than even the work of the Abolition Societies,
was what the Negro was doing for himself. In the era of the Revolution
began that racial consciousness on which almost all later effort for
social betterment has been based.

By 1700 the only coöperative effort on the part of the Negro was such as
that in the isolated society to which Cotton Mather gave rules, or in a
spasmodic insurrection, or a rather crude development of native African