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CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS 1619 The fi rst slaves in the British North American colonies arrive in Jamestown aboard a Dutch ship. 1688 Mennonites in Germantown, Pennsylvania, issue the fi rst an- tislavery resolution in North America. 1775 Philadelphia Quakers found the fi rst antislavery organization— the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slav- ery, the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. 1777 The Vermont Republic enacts the fi rst North American ban on slavery. The prohibition continues when Vermont becomes a state in 1791. 1787 The Northwest Ordinance allows slave owners to retrieve slaves who fl ee to the Northwest Territory, the 260,000-square-mile area (comprising modern-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi- gan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota) ceded by the British to the United States after the Revolutionary War. Article IV, Section 2, the “fugitive slave and felon clause,” is endorsed by members of the Constitutional Convention, con- stitutionally affi rming the Northwest Ordinance slave clause. 1793 Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act. The Emancipation Act of Upper Canada mandates a schedule for the full emancipation of Canadian slaves. 1800 Gabriel Prosser plans a slave insurrection in Virginia.