Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath

With exhaustive research of individual acts of freedom--such as suicide and slave escapes, legislative action, and antislavery appeals--Nash and Soderlund penetrate beneath such broad generalizations and find a more complicated process at work. Freedom by Degrees shows that the cessation of slavery in Pennsylvania was due not only to ideological commitment, but to economic viability for the masters and efforts on the part of the slaves as well.