manumit

If they were faithful and hardworking, the master would set them free, manumit them, when he died.

From "Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad" by Ann Petry

I felt that I owed my life to her faithful care, and I resolved to take her North, manumit, educate, and marry her.

From Iola Leroy Shadows Uplifted by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

When he had relinquished all hopes of finding her, he called on Isaac T. Hopper and offered to manumit her for four hundred dollars.

From Isaac T. Hopper by Lydia Maria Francis Child

The censors, or at least the consuls, should examine all whom it is proposed to manumit, inquiring into their origin and the reasons and mode of their enfranchisement, as in their examination of the equites.

From Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero by W. Warde Fowler

When he agreed to manumit the man for one hundred and fifty dollars, he expected these suits would be dismissed, of course, as a part of the bargain.

From Isaac T. Hopper by Lydia Maria Francis Child

A comparable process took place in Cuba after the Spanish-American War, when American sugar companies acquired 60% of rural properties across Cuba, reducing independent farmers—largely manumitted slaves and their descendants—to the level of low-wage labor.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026

Instead he’s manumitted by a combo platter of teen love and Paul Williams ballads.

From Salon ● May 29, 2017

But Tubman had plotted with Kessiah’s husband, who had been manumitted, to free his family.

From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2017

A slave woman and her children were manumitted by her husband, who had probably bought them to set them free.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 17, 2017

Several negroes with their wives were manumitted on the ground of long and faithful service.

From Dutch and English on the Hudson A Chronicle of Colonial New York by Maud Wilder Goodwin

“The evidence is pretty strong that Johns Hopkins was an abolitionist,” Crenson said, and the possibility exists that he owned enslaved people for the possibility of manumitting them.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 5, 2021

No wonder human forbearance was strained to its greatest tension when masters, thus liberating their slaves, assumed the lofty air of humanitarians who had actually done a noble act in manumitting a slave!

From History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens by George Washington Williams

This practice received highly favorable social sanction, and masters often celebrated national holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, and other special events by manumitting one or more of their favorite slaves.

From The Black Experience in America by Norman Coombs

Masters were required, when manumitting slaves, to furnish security, as in the other colonies.

From History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens by George Washington Williams

I am not the man who enslaved them; they are indebted to Englishmen for that favor; nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery.

From A Social History of the American Negro Being a History of the Negro Problem in the United States. Including A History and Study of the Republic of Liberia by Benjamin Griffith Brawley