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

During this session, Mr. Jefferson made an unsuccessful effort for the enactment of a law authorizing owners to manumit their slaves.

From History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia by Charles Campbell

Friend Hopper opened a negotiation with them in behalf of the Abolition Society, and they finally consented to manumit them all for seven hundred dollars.

From Isaac T. Hopper by Lydia Maria Francis Child

The Apostle does not reprove me, nor require me to manumit Onesimus, but tells me that I now receive him "forever," and he teaches me how to treat him.

From The Sable Cloud A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) by Nehemiah Adams

She offered to manumit her slaves—telling them that her marriage might make unexpected changes in their destiny, and she wished to insure their happiness.

From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself by Harriet Ann Jacobs

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

This Suliman Pasha strengthened the Georgian interest in this pashalic prodigiously by the purchasing of an immense number of Georgian slaves whom he manumitted at his death.

From Journal of a Residence at Bagdad During the Years 1830 and 1831 by A. J. (Alexander John) Scott

“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

Nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery.

From American Negro Slavery A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

The cruel practice of manumitting aged and helpless slaves became so general in this plantation, that the General Assembly passed a law regulating it, in February, 1728.

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

Much as he had blamed Mr. Duncan for negligence in not manumitting her mother, he had fallen into the same snare.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858 by Various

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