Early New England Abolition
In the 1780s and 1790s, New England became a major focal point for the early movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Led primarily by Quaker activists, humanitarians, and influential merchants like Moses Brown in Rhode Island—formerly a center of slave shipping—the region passed gradual emancipation laws and banned citizens from participating in slave trafficking. This early ethical and legislative shift established northern free-labor principles, setting up the fundamental sectional conflicts over slavery that eventually led to the Civil War.
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