Effort to end slavery began in Pennsylvania

From Pittsburgh-

Nearly a century before the Emancipation Proclamation, the leading anti-slavery movement in the United States was centered in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Abolition Society was founded by Quakers in Philadelphia in 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence. Over the next 60 years, until the emergence of fiery anti-slavery advocates such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, the Pennsylvania group's philosophy of gradual emancipation of slaves was the leading edge of the anti-slavery movement in America.

And unlike most other abolition groups, which went out of business after the Civil War, the Pennsylvania society still exists, handing out about $30,000 a year in grants for historical and equal rights purposes.

It is no accident that the society was founded by Quakers, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, said Rochester Institute of Technology historian Richard Newman.

When the Quakers began as a Christian reform movement in England in the 1600s, he said, they quickly faced persecution, in part because they did not respect the hierarchy of the Anglican Church or social classes of the time.

Even their use of "thee" and "thou" in addressing all people was a sore point for gentry who expected to be called m'lord and m'lady, Mr. Newman said.
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