1775

The Charlotte Town Resolves stipulated North Carolina’s independence from Great Britain and the establishment of separate North Carolina’s counties with governing authority.

The slave population in the colonies is nearly 500,000. In Virginia, the ratio of free colonists to slaves is nearly 1:1. In South Carolina it is approximately 1:2.

Georgia takes action against slave importation.

Black Minutemen participate in the first battles of the Revolutionary war are waged between the British and Colonial armies at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

In July, George Washington announces a ban on the enlistment of free blacks and slaves in the colonial army. By the end of the year, he reverses the ban, ordering the Continental Army to accept the service of free blacks. More than 5,000 blacks, mostly Northerners, fought against the British.

Founding of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (PAS), the world’s first antislavery society and the first Quaker anti-slavery society.

Thomas Paine speaks out against slavery and joins the PAS with Benjamin Rush.

The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Seventeen of the 24 founders are Quakers.