Washington brought 8 slaves to Philadelphia in November 1790. Four of them, he returned to Mount Vernon in Spring 1791, before the 6-month deadline. Two of them were taken on a short trip to New Jersey by Martha Washington, which interrupted their 6-month residency. Two of them were trusted not to take advantage of the Pennsylvania law to seize their freedom.
I see two points regarding this. The first one is that should the issue have come to a lawsuit, a Federal Court might very well have ruled against the State. (Depends on whether they got a Liberal Judge or not.) I don't see how they can lawfully deprive a person of what was regarded by the law of that time as "property." It would be legally the same as arguing a man forfeits his wagon or his land if he crosses a state border. I don't see how that passes constitutional muster.
The Second point, is you are demonstrating how a man might continue slavery in a "free" state. What's to stop a man from maintaining a Plantation in Pennsylvania with a regular rotation of slaves in and out of the state?
"The 1780 Act prohibited further importation of slaves into Pennsylvania, but it also respected the property rights of Pennsylvania slaveholders by not freeing slaves already held in the state. It changed the legal status of future children born to enslaved Pennsylvania mothers from "slave" to "indentured servant", but required those children to work for the mother's master until age 28. To verify that no additional slaves were imported, the Act created a registry of all slaves in the state. Slaveholders who failed to register their slaves annually, or who did it improperly, lost their slaves to manumission.
The 1780 Act specifically exempted members of the U.S. Congress and their personal slaves. Congress was then the only branch of the federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and met in Philadelphia.
1788 Amendment
An Amendment, created to explain and to close loopholes in the 1780 Act, was passed in the Pennsylvania legislature on 29 March 1788. The Amendment prohibited a Pennsylvania slaveholder from transporting a pregnant enslaved woman out-of-state so her child would be born enslaved; and from separating husbands from wives, and children from parents. It required a Pennsylvania slaveholder to register within six months the birth of a child to an enslaved mother. It prohibited all Pennsylvanians from participating in, building or equipping ships for, or providing material support to the slave trade.
The 1780 Act had allowed a non-resident slaveholder visiting Pennsylvania to hold slaves in the state for up to six months. But a loophole was soon identified and exploited: if the non-resident slaveholder took his slaves out of Pennsylvania before the 6-month deadline, it would void his slaves' residency. The 1788 Amendment prohibited this rotation of slaves in and out-of-state to subvert Pennsylvania law."
DiogenesLamp to HandyDandy: “...should the issue have come to a lawsuit, a Federal Court might very well have ruled against the State. (Depends on whether they got a Liberal Judge or not.)
I don’t see how they can lawfully deprive a person of what was regarded by the law of that time as “property.”
It would be legally the same as arguing a man forfeits his wagon or his land if he crosses a state border.
I don’t see how that passes constitutional muster.”
But the whole point here is: it’s just ludicrous to fantasize that in *1790* a Federal judge might declare some state’s slavery laws “unconstitutional”.
That would be contrary to the spirit of the times, which George Washington both understood and obeyed.