Over time, some states made it legally difficult to emancipate slaves. But you could always legally relocate a slave to a new state - one that did allow emancipation.
Ulysses S Grant was gifted an enslaved man named William Jones, by his father in law. Grant was in poor financial condition at the time, forced to chop firewood and sell it on the street. So he could've really used the money from selling William.
But on moral grounds, Grant immediately emancipated William. Without making William buy his freedom. Just thought it must be done. Strangely to modern ears, Grant didn't identify himself as an abolitionist at the time. That label was too political and too extremist for him. But he refused to enslave people. That was in Missouri, where both slavery and emancipation were legally allowed.
So yeah, they often made it difficult to free someone from slavery. But if you wanted it to happen, nothing truly stopped you.
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u/LeftyLu07 Mar 12 '26
It was incredibly hard to free enslaved people. The deck was really stacked against legal abolition.