click image for close-up Click here for the text of this historical document. In 1780, Pennsylvania became the first state after the Revolution to abolish slavery by legislative enactment.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject ...

If the Framers had tried to abolish slavery in the Constitution, the slave states would never have agreed to be part of the new country, and the free states would not have been able later to force ...

Some Americans had opposed slavery since colonial times. In 1777, Vermont was the first U.S. territory to ban slavery, and the state of Pennsylvania followed suit in 1780. By 1804, Northern states ...