Saint-Domingue Refugees and their Enslaved Property : Abolition Societies and the Enforcement of Gradual Emancipation in Pennsylvania and New York

This thesis explores the role of abolition societies in the enforcement of gradual eman-cipation in the north of the United States in the late-eighteenth century. More specifically, it focuses on the refugees from Saint-Domingue who brought their slaves in the state of Penn-sylvania and New York, and how abolition societies adapted their strategies to cope with the massive arrival of hundreds of these refugees in the 1790s. The first section discusses the gradual end of slavery in the north following the American Revolution, starting with Pennsyl-vania in 1780, and the emergence of abolition societies, especially the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS) and the New-York Manumission Society (NYMS). In addition, this section considers the strategies of anti-slavery activists to promote and protect gradual emancipation and limit the movement of slaves within and without their respective states. The second sec-tion presents a case study of Saint-Domingue refugees coming with their slaves and how they interacted with residual slavery in New York and Pennsylvania. It also illustrates how maneu-vers employed by West-Indian slave owners in order to keep their slaves often failed as a re-sult of the intervention of abolition societies.