Slavery in Pennsylvania / A Dissertation Submitted to the Board of University Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Conformity with the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1910

The dissertation traces the arrival and growth of Africans in the Delaware region under early colonial regimes and examines provincial legislative responses over the eighteenth century: import duties, periodic attempts to restrict traffic, conflicts with imperial commercial interests, and local economic and social pressures. It analyzes how competition with white labor, wartime enlistment, merchant resistance, and shifting public sentiment reduced the slave trade, and follows successive laws that raised duties and limited importation. The account concludes with the Revolutionary period measures that ended importation and set the state on a path toward dismantling slavery.