[Sidenote: Emancipation acts.]
[Sidenote: Southern sentiment.]

One evidence that the States were still sound and healthful was the
passage of Emancipation acts. The Revolutionary principles of the rights
of man, the consent of the governed, and political equality, had been
meant for white men; but it was hard to deny their logical application to
the blacks. New anti-slavery societies were formed, particularly in
Pennsylvania; but the first community to act was Vermont. In the
Declaration of Rights prefixed to the Constitution of 1777 it was declared
that since every man is entitled to life, liberty, and happiness,
therefore "no ... person born in this country, or brought here over sea,
ought to be holden by law to serve any person as a servant, slave, or
apprentice" after he arrives at the age of maturity. A few years later
this was supplemented by an act abolishing the institution of slavery
outright. The number of slaves in Vermont was inconsiderable, but in 1780
two States, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, took similar action, affecting
several thousand persons. The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 declared
that "all men are born free and equal." This clause was a few years later
interpreted by the courts to mean that after 1780 no person could legally
be held as a slave. In Pennsylvania in the same year a gradual
Emancipation Act was passed, under which persons then in bondage were to
serve as slaves during their lives; their children, born after 1780, were
eventually to become free; and no person was to be brought into the State
and sold as a slave. Within four years New Hampshire and Connecticut
passed similar Emancipation Acts. In Rhode Island the number of slaves,
3,500, was considerable in proportion to the population, and that State
therefore made a distinct sacrifice for its principles by its act of 1785.
Thus at the expiration of the Confederation in 1788, all the States north
of Maryland, except New York and New Jersey, had put slavery in process of