for the
after-born only at twenty-eight and twenty-five years for males and females
respectively; but a further act of 1817 set the Fourth of July in 1827 as a
time for the emancipation for all remaining slaves in the state. New
Jersey fell into line last of all by an act of 1804 giving freedom to the
after-born at the ages of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females;
and in 1846 she converted the surviving slaves nominally into apprentices
but without materially changing their condition. Supplementary legislation
here and there in these states bestowed freedom upon slaves in military
service, restrained the import and export of slaves, and forbade the
citizens to ply the slave trade by land or sea.[11]

[Footnote 11: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 77-85; B.C.
Steiner, _Slavery in Connecticut_, pp. 30-32; _Rhode Island Colonial
Records_, X, 132, 133; A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in New York," in the New
York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 286-298; H.S. Cooley, "Slavery
in New Jersey" (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XIV, nos. 9, 10), pp.
47-50; F.B. Lee, _New Jersey as a Colony and as a State_ (New York, 1912),
IV, 25-48.]

Thus from Pennsylvania eastward the riddance of slavery was procured or put
in train, generally by the device of emancipating the _post nati_; and in
consequence the slave population in that quarter dwindled before the middle
of the nineteenth century to a negligible residue. To the southward the
tobacco states, whose industry had reached a somewhat stationary condition,
found it a simple matter to prohibit the further importation of slaves from
Africa. Delaware did this in 1776, Virginia in 1778, Maryland in 1783 and
North Carolina in 1794. But in these commonwealths as well as in their more
southerly neighbors, the contemplation of the great social and economic
problems involved in disestablishing slavery daunted the bulk of the
citizens and impelled their representatives to conservatism. The advocacy
of abolition, whether sudden or gradual, was little more than sporadic.
The people were not to be stampeded in the cause of inherent rights or
any other abstract philosophy. It was a condition and not a theory which
confronted them.

In Delaware, however, the problem was hardly formidable, for at the time of
the first federal census there were hardly nine thousand slaves and a third
as many colored freemen in her gross population of some sixty thousand
souls. Nevertheles