Vermont was amongst the first places to abolish slavery by constitutional dictum.[1] Although estimates place the number of slaves at 25 in 1770,[2][3]slavery was banned outright[4] upon the founding of Vermont in July 1777, and by a further provision in its Constitution, existing male slaves became free at the age of 21 and females at the age of 18.[5] Not only did Vermont's legislature agree to abolish slavery entirely, it also moved to provide full voting rights for African-American males. According to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, "Vermont's July 1777 declaration was not entirely altruistic either. While it did set an independent tone from the 13 colonies, the declaration's wording was vague enough to let Vermont's already-established slavery practices continue."
Chapter I of the Constitution, titled "A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont" said:
no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent, after they arrive to such age, or bound by law, for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.[6]
The state of Vermont was created in 1777 by settlers who had purchased their land from the colonial governor of New Hampshire and resisted subsequent attempts by New York's colonial government to exert jurisdiction over the area, called the New Hampshire Grants. These settlers, who named the former New Hampshire Grants "Vermont", wished to create a popular government representing their interests, among them abolishing slavery. After 1777, Vermont was repeatedly denied admission to the Union as New York and New Hampshire continued to debate jurisdiction, and it existed as the independent Vermont Republic until March 1791, after jurisdictional disputes were resolved by a compromise signed in October 1790. After Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state in 1791, it became subject to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution of the United States (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) requiring fugitive slaves fleeing into a state whose laws forbid slavery to be returned. Later the state was subject to the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, allowing slave owners to recover fugitive slaves who fled to Vermont.
Harvey Amani Whitfield's book, The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, reports that among those violating the abolition of slavery were Vermont Supreme Court Judge Stephen Jacob and Levi Allen, brother of the military leader Ethan Allen.[7]
In 1858 the "Freedom Act" was ratified, declaring that any slave who reached Vermont was automatically freed.[8]
1790 census
The 1790 census of the United States did not reach Vermont until the following year because Vermont was not part of the United States until its admission to the Union in 1791.
The 1790 census, as published, reported 16 slaves in Vermont, all in Bennington County. This was due to a compilation error; the matter is discussed at some length in The Connecticut River Valley in southern Vermont and New Hampshire; historical sketches, published in 1929.
A Curious Census Error Reported 17 Slaves Held in Vermont in 1790
A clerical error in the office of the United States Census Bureau in its report of the first census taken in Vermont in 1790 makes that report say that there were 17 negro slaves in Vermont that year, as against the generally understood and frequently repeated assertion that no person was ever held in bondage in this state. Vermont declared against slavery in 1777, and that declaration has always been adhered to.
It is true that the printed report of the United States census of 1790 gave sixteen slaves to Vermont, all of them in Bennington County. But it has long been known that that first census, as given to the public, contained numerous errors, and that this assignment of slaves to Vermont was one of them.
The facts are that in consequence of the discovery of many errors in the reports of previous censuses, Gen. Francis A. Walker, superintendent of the census of 1870, instituted a critical comparison of the printed reports of previous censuses with the manuscript returns of the same on file in the census bureau. In the course of this examination Mr. George D. Harrington, chief clerk of the bureau, made the important discovery that in compiling the returns of Vermont the careless clerk or copyist who did the work transferred the footing of the column of "free colored" persons to the foot of the adjoining column of "slaves." Gen. Walker, in his introduction to ninth census report, noted the discovery in the following words:—
"A single result of these examinations into the earliest censuses has enough of curious and substantial interest to be noted here. The State of Vermont was, in the publication of the first census, that of 1790, put down as numbering among its inhabitants sixteen slaves. In subsequent publications this number was by a clerical or typographical error changed to seventeen; but with this accidental variation the statement of the first census has passed unchallenged; and antiquarians have even taken pains to explain in what manner it was this small number of slaves should have been found in a State otherwise through all its history a free State. The reexamination of the original census roll of Vermont at the census of 1790, for the purpose of this republication, brought to light what had never before been suspected—that these sixteen persons appeared upon the return of the assistant marshal as "Free colored." By a simple error of compilation they were introduced into a column for slaves; and this error has been perpetuated through nearly the whole history of the government until corrected in the accompanying tables." (See page 46 of Introduction to the volume of Population of the Census of 1870.)
Under the corrected table for Vermont on a subsequent page of that volume will be found the following note: "An examination of the original manuscript returns shows that there were never any slaves in Vermont. The original error occurred in preparing the result for publication when sixteen persons returned as 'free colored' were classified as 'slaves.' "
It is certainly remarkable that this erroneous assignment of slaves to Vermont should have gone uncorrected for eighty years. It was not because Vermonters of that day did not know better, for the Vermont Gazette, printed at Bennington by Anthony Haswell, in its issue of Sept. 26, 1791, said, "The return of the marshal's assistant for the county of Bennington shows that there are in the county 2503 white males over sixteen years of age, and 2617 under that age; 5559 white females; 17 black males over 4 and under 16; 15 black females. Total of inhabitants 12,254. To the honor of humanity, no slaves."
However, in historian Ira Berlin's 1998 work Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America he cited the 1790 census figure of 16.[3]
Notes and references
↑ Wood, Peter (2020). "13". 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project. New York, NY: Encounter Books. p.202. ISBN9781641771252. LCCN2020032267.
Vermont is a landlocked state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the state had a population of 643,503, ranking it the second least populated U.S. state ahead of Wyoming. It is the nation's sixth smallest state in area. The state's capital of Montpelier is the least populous U.S. state capital. No other U.S. state has a most populous city with fewer residents than Burlington. Vermont is also well known for being the largest producer of true maple syrup in the United States for over 200 years.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
The Constitution of the State of Vermont is the fundamental body of law of the U.S. state of Vermont, describing and framing its government. It was adopted in 1793 following Vermont's admission to the Union in 1791 and is largely based upon the 1777 Constitution of the Vermont Republic which was drafted at Windsor in the Old Constitution House and amended in 1786. At 8,295 words, it is the shortest U.S. state constitution. Largely unchanged since 1777, Vermont's Constitution is the only active constitutional document to have been drafted and ratified outside of the United States.
Suffield is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The town is part of the Capitol Planning Region, and located in the Connecticut River Valley. As of the 2020 census, the population was 15,752. The town center is a census-designated place listed as Suffield Depot.
Bennington is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,501 at the 2020 census.
Dorset is a town in Bennington County, Vermont, United States. The population was 2,133 at the 2020 census. Dorset is famous for being the location of Cephas Kent's Inn, where four meetings of the Convention that signed the Dorset Accords led to the independent Vermont Republic and future statehood. Dorset is the site of America's oldest marble quarry and is the birthplace of Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. East Dorset is the site of the Wilson House and the Griffith Library. The town is named after the English county of Dorset.
In the United States census, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget define a set of self-identified categories of race and ethnicity chosen by residents, with which they most closely identify. Residents can indicate their origins alongside their race, and are asked specifically whether they are of Hispanic or Latino origin in a separate question.
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states, so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to his or her owner.
The Vermont Republic, officially known at the time as the State of Vermont, was an independent state in New England that existed from January 15, 1777, to March 4, 1791. The state was founded in January 1777, when delegates from 28 towns met and declared independence from the jurisdictions and land claims of the British colonies of Quebec, New Hampshire, and New York. The republic remained in existence for the next fourteen years, albeit without diplomatic recognition from any foreign power. On March 4, 1791, it was admitted into the United States as the State of Vermont, with the constitution and laws of the independent state continuing in effect after admission.
In the British colonies in North America and in the United States before the abolition of slavery in 1865, free Negro or free Black described the legal status of African Americans who were not enslaved. The term was applied both to formerly enslaved people (freedmen) and to those who had been born free, whether of African or mixed descent.
The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of enslaved people who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause which is in the United States Constitution. It was thought that forcing states to deliver fugitive slaves back to enslavement violated states' rights due to state sovereignty and was believed that seizing state property should not be left up to the states. The Fugitive Slave Clause states that fugitive slaves "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due", which abridged state rights because forcing people back into slavery was a form of retrieving private property. The Compromise of 1850 entailed a series of laws that allowed slavery in the new territories and forced officials in free states to give a hearing to slave-owners without a jury.
The geologic history of Vermont begins more than 450 million years ago during the Cambrian and Devonian periods.
The 1840 United States census was the sixth census of the United States. Conducted by U.S. marshals on June 1, 1840, it determined the resident population of the United States to be 17,069,453 – an increase of 32.7 percent over the 12,866,020 persons enumerated during the 1830 census. The total population included 2,487,355 slaves. In 1840, the center of population was about 260 miles (418 km) west of Washington, near Weston, Virginia.
The first Constitution of Vermont was drafted in July 1777, almost five months after Vermont declared itself an independent country, now frequently called the Vermont Republic. It was in effect until its extensive revision in 1786. The second Constitution of Vermont went into effect in 1786 and lasted until 1793, two years after Vermont was admitted to the Union as the fourteenth state. In 1791 Vermont became the fourteenth US state and in 1793 it adopted its current constitution.
The 1790 United States census was the first United States census. It recorded the population of the whole United States as of Census Day, August 2, 1790, as mandated by Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution and applicable laws. In the first census, the population of the United States was enumerated to be 3,929,214 inhabitants.
The 1820 United States census was the fourth census conducted in the United States. It was conducted on August 7, 1820. The 1820 census included six new states: Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama and Maine. There has been a district wide loss of 1820 census records for Arkansas Territory, Missouri Territory, and New Jersey.
Ona "Oney" Judge Staines was an enslaved biracial woman who was owned by the Washington family, first at the family's plantation at Mount Vernon and later, after George Washington became president, at the President's House in Philadelphia, then the nation's capital city. In her early twenties, she absconded, becoming a fugitive slave, after learning that Martha Washington had intended to transfer ownership of her to her granddaughter, known to have a horrible temper. She fled to New Hampshire, where she married, had children, and converted to Christianity. Though she was never formally freed, the Washington family ultimately stopped pressing her to return to Virginia after George Washington's death.
When the Dutch and Swedes established colonies in the Delaware Valley of what is now Pennsylvania, in North America, they quickly imported enslaved Africans for labor; the Dutch also transported them south from their colony of New Netherland. Enslavement was documented in this area as early as 1639. William Penn and the colonists who settled in Pennsylvania tolerated slavery. Still, the English Quakers and later German immigrants were among the first to speak out against it. Many colonial Methodists and Baptists also opposed it on religious grounds. During the Great Awakening of the late 18th century, their preachers urged slaveholders to free their slaves. High British tariffs in the 18th century discouraged the importation of additional slaves, and encouraged the use of white indentured servants and free labor.
An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, passed by the Fifth Pennsylvania General Assembly on 1 March 1780, prescribed an end for slavery in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States. It was the first slavery abolition act in the course of human history to be adopted by an elected body.
Gradual emancipation was a legal mechanism used by some states to abolish slavery over some time, such as An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery of 1780 in Pennsylvania.
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