1775 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

Portugal abolishes slavery in the Madeira Islands, whose sugar will hereafter be produced by free men (see 1761; sugar, 1432).

George III signs an order releasing from bondage the women and young children in British coal mines and salt mines. Many of the children are under 8, work like the women for 10 to 12 hours per day, and have been transferable with the collieries and salt works when the properties changed hands or their masters had no further use for them (see Scottish coal miners, 1778).

Stop discrimination against women, says English-born pamphleteer Thomas Paine, 38, in his Pennsylvania Magazine. Paine has failed as a corsetmaker and tax collector in England, twice failed in marriage, and arrived at Philadelphia late last year with letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin and encouragement to try his luck in America.

The first American abolition society is founded in Pennsylvania to free the slaves, whose population below the Mason-Dixon line now exceeds 450,000. Black slaves outnumber colonists two to one in South Carolina, while in Virginia the ratio is about equal.