The Legislature had power to prohibit the bringing into the state slaves for the purpose of sale.  Masters were required to treat their slaves with humanity, to properly feed and clothe them, and to abstain from inflicting any punishment extending to life and limb.  Laws could be passed granting owners the right to emancipate their slaves, but requiring security that the slaves thus emancipated should not become a charge upon the county.

During the session of Congress in 1791, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery presented another memorial, calling upon Congress to exercise the powers they had been declared to possess by the report of the committee which had been spread upon the Journals of the house.  Thus emboldened, other anti-slavery societies, of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and a few local societies of Maryland, presented memorials praying for the suppression of slavery in the United States.  They were referred to a select committee; and, as they made no report, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the next year, called the attention of Congress to the subject.  On the 24th of November, 1792, a Mr. Warner Mifflin, an anti-slavery Quaker from Delaware, addressed a memorial to Congress on the general subject of slavery, which was read and laid upon the table without debate.  On the 26th of November, Mr. Stute of North Carolina offered some sharp remarks upon the presumption of the Quaker, and moved that the petition be returned to the petitioner, and that the clerk be instructed to erase the entry from the Journal.  This provoked a heated discussion; but at length the petition was returned to the author, and the motion to erase the record from the Journal was withdrawn by the mover.

In 1793 a law was passed providing for the return of fugitives from justice and from service, “In case of the escape out of any state or territory of any person held to service or labor under the laws thereof, the person to whom such labor was due, his agent, or attorney, might seize the fugitive and carry him before any United States judge, or before any magistrate of the city, town, or county in which the arrest was made; and such judge or magistrate, on proof to his satisfaction, either oral or by affidavit before any other magistrate, that the person seized was really a fugitive, and did owe labor as alleged, was to grant a certificate to that effect to the claimant, this certificate to serve as sufficient warrant for the removal of the fugitive to the state whence he had fled.  Any person obstructing in any way such seizure or removal, or harboring or concealing any fugitive after notice, was liable to a penalty of $500, to be recovered by the claimant.”