ABSTRACT
In June 1771, Burlington County Quaker Rachel Moore made the decision to free her young slave, Jane. Like many Quakers in Greater Philadelphia, Moore had been involved in a multi-decade long discussion among the Society of Friends about the morality of slaveholding. Since 1754, when John Woolman and Anthony Benezet jointly published an epistle to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that invited Quakers to ponder just how un-christian slaveholding actually was, many throughout the region began to seriously think about abandoning slave property. 1 Of course, both Quakers and non-Quakers around Philadelphia were more concerned about the economic realities of abolitionism than the fate of their immortal souls as slaveholders. Slave owners like Moore found a middle ground for these concerns, as she was able to free seven-year-old Jane, but then indenture her to Thomas Gordon of Oxford, near Philadelphia, until she reached the age of twenty-three. Until 1787, Jane would labour for Gordon without pay, though she would receive food and clothing as well as an education that included ‘reading, writing, arithmetic’ as well as the more common ‘sewing, spinning, knitting, and other household business to the females’. By this agreement, Moore ensured Jane's future freedom, quelled her own moral dilemma and, at the same time, reaped a payment of twenty-one pounds from Gordon for the indenture. This indenturing of minor slaves was widespread among Quakers and non-Quakers alike, making Moore one of the earliest New Jerseyans who practiced a form of gradual abolition — a concept that remained hotly contested throughout the revolutionary period. 2
