Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath

by Gary B. Nash, Jean R. Soderlund

During the revolutionary era, in the midst of the struggle for liberty from Great Britain, Americans up and down the Atlantic seaboard confronted the injustice of holding slaves. Lawmakers debated abolition, masters considered freeing their slaves, and slaves emancipated themselves by running away. But by 1800, of states south of New England, only Pennsylvania had extricated itself from slavery, the triumph, historians have argued, of Quaker moralism and the philosophy of natural rights. With exhaustive research of individual acts of freedom, slave escapes, legislative action, and anti-slavery appeals, Nash and Soderlund penetrate beneath such broad generalizations and find a more complicated process at work. Defiant runaway slaves joined Quaker abolitionists like Anthony Benezet and members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society to end slavery and slave owners shrewdly calculated how to remove themselves from a morally bankrupt institution without suffering financial loss by
freeing slaves as indentured servants, laborers, and cottagers.

Genres: History

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 17, 1991

About the author

Gary B. Nash was a distinguished American historian known for his scholarship on the American Revolutionary era, slavery, and the experiences of marginalized communities in shaping early U.S. history. A graduate of Princeton University, where he earned both his undergraduate and doctoral degrees, Nash also served in the U.S. Navy before embarking on an academic career. He taught at Princeton and then at UCLA, where he became a full professor and later held key administrative roles focused on educational development.
Nash's work highlighted the roles of working-class individuals, African Americans, Native Americans, and women in the nation's founding, challenging traditional narratives centered solely on elite figures. His inclusive approach often sparked debate, notably with historian Edmund Morgan, who questioned the broader impact of the grassroots movements Nash emphasized.
Beyond academia, Nash was instrumental in shaping history education in the United States. He co-directed the development of the National History Standards and led the National Center for History in the Schools. A past president of the Organization of American Historians, he was also a member of numerous esteemed scholarly societies. Throughout his career, Nash authored or contributed to dozens of influential books, articles, and essays that left a lasting mark on the field.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was ​published 3 years after Soderlund’s Quakers and Slavery. While the introduction does not note that it was based on her dissertation as was the case with QaS, there are two reasons to think that she and co-author Nash relied heavily on her research for that former book to co-write Freedom by Degrees. First, QaS was referred to a number of times in the footnotes for this one. Second, some, if not much of the information shared in the first 2-3 chapters of FbD overlaps with what was depicted in QaS. This was so much the case, in fact, that I found myself getting bored at the start of this book. Fortunately, it moved on to other issues in the middle and later chapters.

​As happened with QaS, Freedom by Degrees was based a very thorough ​review of ​a large and diverse set of primary documents​. These included census, tax and probate records; newspaper articles and announcements; personal journals; and correspondence between various individuals​ living in Philadelphia and at least two other counties close by: Delaware and Chester. ​Liberal and effective use was also made of secondary sources like journal articles and books. All of these were well organized and carefully annotated in footnotes.

Making extensive use of charts and graphs Nash and Soderlund systematically pointed out how and why slavery, Quaker based Abolitionism, and freedom for African Americans evolved differently in Philadelphia vs the two outlying areas over the course of the late 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. The thoroughness with which the authors did this led me to two responses. On the one hand, I admired all the effort that went into producing their narrative. On the other, there were times when the highly detail​ed information and the statistics ​generated in the large number of charts and graphs ​got to be tedious. So much so that I either began to skim through parts of it. Or I had to limit myself to no more than 15-20 pages at any one sitting.

The other element which made this relatively short book of barely more than 200 pages in length slow going was its prose. The authors often employed complex, compound sentences. Many other sentences were lengthy lists of names, places, etc. Both of these tendencies made the information they wanted to impart more, rather than less, challenging to assimilate.

Finally, there was a late 18th century map of that area of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware in the first chapter of the book. But it was such a poor reproduction that I could not grasp the locations of the places which the text alluded to. A more legible map would have been better.

Despite these stylistic obstacles I still came away from reading FbD deeply informed in at least three respects. First, the early Quakers who started these efforts to free the African American slaves deserve much more attention and credit than they have been given over the years: Johnathan Woolman, Benjamin Lay, and Anthony Benezet. So much so that I have found the titles of books about each of them which I plan to read in the coming months. Second, Abolitionism eventually succeeded in southeastern Pennsylvania more out of economic rather than altruistic or moralistic motivations. Third, the freedom gained by African Americans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was given begrudgingly and in a limited way with racist elements which kept them in a subjugated and poverty stricken state.

This is a good companion book to read along with QaS. Readers should be aware, however, that the focus on Pennsylvania makes both books somewhat limited in their appeal. As was the case with QaS before reading FbD I would recommend that the reader gain a foundation about Quaker theology and history by reading Thomas E. Drake's book​ called​ Quakers and Slavery in America. Although it was published in 1950, it is still ​quite informative​. I have re​view​ed it as well.

[Justinian]

2016-04 - Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath. Gary Nash (Author) 1991. 272 Pages

I read this as part of a self-guided research project. I realized that I had read sections and bits of it here and there in other places. The book is not just a chronology of events but does spend some time discussing rationales and why certain choices were made and what the ramification soft hos choices were … how they played out. First you must understand that Quakers were slaveholders just like everybody else. That slavery was very much in Pennsylvania an economic issue and thought of as such. Greatest concern was protecting property and property value more than any noble ideals. Changes in slavery caused changes in other labor methods like indentured servants, tenant/cottage labor, and wage labor. The abolition of slavery also brought to the fore issues of dealing with slaves from other states and more poignantly societal reactions to Free Blacks and how society sought to control them legally and preserve the status quo while still feeling morally superior to those Southern slave barons. A good book about a difficult and still relevant topic in our nation, our state, and our daily relationships.