Vermont was the state whose 1777 constitution was the first in North America to prohibit slavery, a milestone in the early United States.
The Vermont Constitution, adopted on July 8, 1777, declared that no person could be held as a servant for life or be forced to serve beyond age twenty-one for males and eighteen for females, except by consent or contract. The provision is widely recognized as the first constitutional ban on adult slavery in North America.
Vermont was then an independent republic rather than a state in the United States. It joined the Union as the fourteenth state in 1791, after resolving a boundary dispute with New York and receiving congressional approval.
The 1777 language did not immediately eliminate every form of coerced labor or racial inequality in Vermont. Enslaved people and discriminatory practices still existed in the region, so the constitutional provision should be understood as an important legal milestone rather than proof of immediate social equality.