Slavery for Life or Otherwise: South Central PA’s Enslaved and Slaveholding Families in the Age of Gradual Abolition, 1780-1847
The dissertation examines how white and black families navigated a changing world after the state assembly enacted the nation’s first gradual abolition law during the Revolutionary War. It emphasizes the fact that there is a troubling history of slavery in Cumberland County that occurred between the sunnier events of emancipation and county participation in the underground railroad.
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