Vermont adopted a 1777 constitution banning adult slavery.
Representatives of the Vermont Republic completed the constitution in July 1777 and adopted it at Windsor on July 8. The document declared that adult males held in slavery would become free at age 21 and adult females at age 18. It is widely described as the first written constitution in North America to prohibit adult slavery.
This action occurred before Vermont joined the United States. The territory had declared independence from competing claims by New York and New Hampshire and operated as the independent Vermont Republic. Its constitution also provided for universal adult male suffrage without a property requirement, a notable provision for the era.
The wording and enforcement of the 1777 measure were not identical to modern abolition laws, and slavery did not disappear immediately from Vermont life. Historians have documented the presence of enslaved people there despite the constitutional language. Vermont entered the Union as the 14th state in 1791, after a settlement of its territorial dispute with New York.