Among the first organizations of its kind in America, the Free African Society's main goal was to provide aid to newly freed blacks so that they could gather strength and develop leaders in the community. In the first two decades after the war, inspired by revolutionary ideals, northern states largely abolished slavery causing many freed men to migrate to Philadelphia from rural areas of Pennsylvania and the South; it was a growing center of free black society. Other organizations also developed in other states throughout the north, including “Boston’s African Society, organized in 1796; New York’s African Society for Mutual Relief, established in 1808; and the Resolute Beneficial Society of Washington D.C., founded all in 1818” (White, Bay,
