Page "History of Liberia" Paragraph 5

After 1783 the ranks of free blacks expanded markedly, due both to manumission of the enslaved in the South during the first two decades after the Revolutionary War, attributable both to slaveholders inspired by its ideals and to others inspired to manumission by Quaker, Methodist and Baptist preachers active in those years.

The Northeast states abolished slavery following the war, generally on a graduated basis where it was still economically viable, as in the mid-Atlantic states.