By the time he left the Treasury in 1795, slavery had begun to recede in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut had decided to abolish it. Conspicuously missing were New York and New Jersey. So in January 1798, Hamilton resumed his association with the New York Manumission Society, his personal affiliation having lapsed during his Philadelphia years. Elected one of its four legal advisers, he helped defend free blacks when slave masters from out of state brandished bills of sale and tried to snatch them off the New York streets.
( Ron Chernow )
[ Alexander Hamilton ]
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