Founded in [[New York City]] 1785, under the full name "The New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May be Liberated". Founders included [[Gilded Age/Alexander Hamilton]], [[Noah Webster]], and [[John Jay]], despite the fact that Jay owned slaves and preferred gradual emancipation. The society founded a free school for black children, lobbied and petitioned for legislation abolishing slavery (as all the other northern states except New Jersey had done by 1785), and organized boycotts against New York businesses involved in the slave trade.