Query re abolition of slavery in the North

In OTL slavery existed all over the Colonies in 1776. It was gradually abolished in Northern states, starting I think in New England.

What happened to former slaves?

I am aware that Virginia considered abolishing slavery in the early 1830s. I believe that at that time the North South line was not as clear cut.

What does the history of say New York say about what might have happened in Virginia and other border and upper south states?
 
Virginia, Maryland and Delaware should be considered separately from the North, since they're three very different circumstances, but there's still probably something to be learned from comparison.

The Northern states emancipated without compensation, usually with a time delay; something they could do because slaveowners were few enough in number that they couldn't block the move politically, but the delay allowed them to sell their slaves out of state in order to get some sort of compensation (just not at state expense). Maryland and Delaware might be able to do this, but they're smaller states with more industry (Baltimore was the 3rd largest city in America through much of this period); they're trying to use slaves for non-agricultural purposes, and finding out just how much harder it is to control an urban proletariat than it is to control a chain gang in a field. They also allow literacy among slaves, and it's fairly widespread (Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman etc). Depending on the timing, the rest of the South might not be WILLING to absorb the slaves of Maryland and Delaware - they'll become problems.

Virginia's slave population is large enough that compensated manumission will break the state financially for a genrration, maybe two. And slavowners are powerful enough politically to block uncompensated manumission. Virginia debated manumission several times, the last time in 1850, and it always came down to "we can't afford it" rather than any real moral point.
 
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