Personal Liberty

During his time as a student at Columbia College, Daniel D. Tompkins, the future New York Governor, wrote an essay on enslavement where he advocated for the cause of liberty of all men. Ten years after the American Revolutionary War ended, he wrote that he was “happy for America that she has been successful in her struggle for Liberty, but unhappy that she has not fully completed her design.” Decades later, Governor Tompkins aided in completing “her design” with the passage of Chapter 137 of the Laws of 1817, which ordered the gradual abolition of the enslaved and complete abolition by 1827 in New York State.