enjoy the blessings of
freedom as a reward for their toils and labors.

"_Be it therefore enacted_, That each and every slave, who,
by the appointment and direction of his owner, hath enlisted
in any regiment or corps raised within this State, either on
Continental or State establishment, and hath been received
as a substitute for any free person whose duty or lot it was
to serve in such regiment or corps, and hath served
faithfully during the term of such enlistment, or hath been
discharged from such service by some officer duly authorized
to grant such discharge, shall, from and after the passing
of this act, be fully and completely emancipated, and shall
be held and deemed free, in as full and ample a manner as if
each and every one of them were specially named in this act;
and the Attorney-general for the Commonwealth is hereby
required to bring an action, _in forma pauperis_, in behalf
of any of the persons above described who shall, after the
passage of this act, be detained in servitude by any person
whatsoever; and if, upon such prosecution, it shall appear
that the pauper is entitled to his freedom in consequence of
this act, a jury shall be empaneled to assess the damages
for his detention.

"III. And whereas it has been represented to this General
Assembly, that Aberdeen, a negro man slave, hath labored a
number of years in the public service at the lead mines, and
for his meritorious services is entitled to freedom;

"_Be it therefore enacted_, That the said slave Aberdeen,
shall be, and he is hereby, emancipated and declared free in
as full and ample a manner as if he had been born free."

In 1786 an act was passed to emancipate a negro slave who had acted as a
spy for Lafayette. This practice was not perhaps wholly confined to the
South. Although Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, her territory
was, it seems, still subject to slave hunts, and her negro soldiers to
the insult of an attempt to re-enslave them. But Gen. Washington, though
himself a slave-holder, regarded the rights of those who fought for
liberty and national independence, with too much sacredness and the
honor of the country with too much esteem, to permit them to be set
aside, merely to accommodate those who had rendered the nation's cause
no help or assistance. Gen. Putnam received the follo