"The statutory servitude mandated by post nati ['born after', or gradual] emancipation was not, and was
never intended to be, training for independent citizenship. What the gradual abolition statutes offered
was a framework within which whites could enjoy abolition and slavery at the
same time-just as they had always enjoyed personhood and property together in
their slaves. Post nati emancipation
hardly provided the context for the kind of transformation in imagination,
practice, and language that freedom demanded."
~Joanne Melish, Disowning Slavery
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