Chapter 7 Antebellum Pennsylvania Objective: Understand the history of enslaved people.

Let’s find out what you already know… Answer each of the following questions with YES or NO.

#1. Has slavery always existed? (according to our first accounts of written history)

Answer YES

#1. Has slavery always existed? Sumerians, from the world’s first civilization of Mesopotamia, inscribed their business records on clay tablets in cuneiform. Some of their first written recordings were of slave purchases.

Although Mesopotamians were known to care for their children it was common for the father of a household to sell off his children to pay debts.

Some historians believe that slavery was first generated within families or clans during prehistoric times and became commonplace by the time the world’s first civilization started to thrive in the Fertile Crescent. (modern day Iraq)

#2. Do you think Colonial Quakers owned slaves?

Answer YES

#2. Do you think Colonial Quakers owned slaves? William Penn was granted his colony in Pennsylvania in Though he flooded the "Holy Experiment" with Quakers whose descendants would later find their faith incompatible with slaveholding, the original Quakers had no qualms about it.

Penn himself owned slaves, and used them to work his estate, Pennsbury.

#3. After the Revolutionary War, do you think people still owned slaves in the state of Pennsylvania?

Answer YES

Quakers had been debating the morality of slavery for a century, but moral outrage was only one factor in slavery's demise in Pennsylvania, and not always the overriding one. Economics, politics and a propensity for slaves to free themselves had a lot to do with it.

#4. Do you think slavery still exists in the world today?

Answer YES

Why There Were 27 Million Slaves In 2010 CLIP (click on clip title once webpage loads) Why There Were 27 Million Slaves In 2010 CLIP

#5. Do you think slavery still exists in the United States?

Answer YES

Slavery In America