Sources

New Jersey prohibits the enlistment of slaves in the militia without their master’s permission.

Publication in Germantown (PA) of Anthony Benezet’s pamphlet, Observations on the Inslaving [sic], Importing and Purchasing of Negroes, the first of many anti-slavery works by the most influential antislavery writer of 18th century America.

Pennsylvania Quakers forbid their members from owning slaves or participating in the slave trade.

John Woolman addresses his fellow Quakers in Some Consideration of the Keeping of Negroes and exerts great influence in leading the Society of Friends to recognize the evil of slavery. The London Yearly Meeting also issues a statement condemning slavery in its Epistle for the first time.

Philadelphia Quakers add the question ‘do Friends observe the former advice of our Yearly Meeting, not to Encourage the Importation of Negroes not to buy them after imported’ to the ‘Queries’ which all Quakers in the colony were required to answer.

A series of fires in New York City leads to a mass panic among the colonists who come to believe in a conspiracy by enslaved people. Although historians are unsure whether such a conspiracy in fact existed, hundreds of slaves are arrested and, by the late summer, dozens had been convicted and hanged and hundreds transported out of the colony.

The Jamaican maroon communities under Nanny of the Maroons and others sign a peace treaty with the British, ending the First Maroon War. The British recognize the maroons, but the maroons are forced to accept the slavery system on the island.