On Saturday, February 23, 2019, please visit the King of Prussia Historical Society’s table at the Upper Merion Township Library’s 20th Annual Celebration of Black History. We will display a partial timeline of freedom in our state and county with facts like these:
- 1750 – Slavery did exist in Upper Merion township. Specific evidence of this can be found in Richard Bevan’s advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette that he had for sale, “near the Gulf Mill, a likely negro, male thirty years of age, fit for town or country business. Also a negro girl about fifteen years of age.”
- 1820 – With the Missouri Compromise, Missouri is admitted to the Union as a slave state, as long as Maine is also admitted as a non-slave state. It kept the delicate balance in the Senate between the slave-holding and free states.
US Senator Jonathan Roberts (resident of Upper Merion) makes an impassioned speech against the Missouri Compromise. “I wish to see the pages of [Missouri’s] constitution irradiated with the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty — to see her become a party to that covenant round which the patriots of ’76 pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.”
- 1861 – The Civil War begins. Pennsylvania was a major supplier of iron, arms and food for the conflict and ends up providing over 360,000 soldiers for the war effort (second only to New York).
Among them, Colonel Hartranft raises a regiment of 90 day volunteers from Norristown and the surrounding area: the 4th PA Vol Inf. When they refuse to re-enlist after The First Battle of Bull Run, he raises another, the 51 PA Vol Inf, partly from Montgomery County.
Anna Morris Holstein, Upper Merion resident, Civil War nurse and author of “Three Years in Field Hospitals of the Army of the Potomac” writes:
“When the first sounds of war were heard, and there dimly dawned the startling fact that traitors were imperiling the life of the nation, we all remember how thousands rushed to arms at our country’s call, eager to proffer aid in this her hour of need. .. The first that our quiet valley [Upper Merion] knew of the preparation for war, a company was being gathered from about our very doors, – with Col. Hartranft … their chosen commander.”
Pennsylvania also ranks first in the number of black soldiers (8,612) mustered into the Union Army, forming eleven regiments of U.S. Colored Troops.
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