New York Gradual Abolition Act of 1799

New York's Gradual Abolition Act freed no living enslaved person. It provided only that children born to enslaved mothers after July 4, 1799, would be freed — men at age 28, women at 25 — after decades of unpaid labor. Existing enslaved people remained property for life. Thousands remained legally enslaved in New York into the 1820s; the 1840 census still recorded a handful of enslaved individuals in New Jersey, which passed a similar 1804 act.