This case was a direct challenge to the very existence of slavery in Massachusetts. Would you like to provide additional feedback to help improve Mass.gov? President George Washington appointed Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice William Cushing to be one of the first justices on the United States Supreme Court in 1790. I have a 5th Gr. Since New England’s climate was not suitable for large-scale farming, most slaves in Massachusetts were laborers for merchants and tradesman or domestic servants for wealthy families, although some did work as farm hands. Massachusetts was the first state in the new nation to abolish the institution of slavery. See Emily Blanck, Seventeen Eighty-Three: The Turning Point in the Law of Slavery and Freedom in Massachusetts, 65 The New England Quarterly 24, 27-28 (2002) (listing all documented freedom suits). [since Massachusetts last deliberately sent back an innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery. 17. There is not one slave in Nebraska; there are perhaps a million slaves in Massachusetts. Mum Bett, aka Elizabeth Freeman, Watercolor on Ivory Painted by Susan Ridley Sedgwick circa 1812. This section is intended to provide basic information to students and educators, so that a context is provided for the legal cases. www.slavenorth.com provides a brief overview. Harvard Law School was built with money made off the sale of land donated by a wealthy plantation owner, Isaac Royall Jr., and the House of Seven Gables in Salem was built with money from Captain John Turner’s small role in the Triangle Trade of selling fish to Caribbean plantation owners to feed their slaves while importing the sugar they harvested on the plantations (although he didn’t actually ship or sell slaves himself). Slavery there is said to have predated the settlement of Massachusetts Bay colony in 1629, and circumstantial evidence gives a date of 1624-1629 for the first slaves. Reports of this trial reflect that attorney Levi Lincoln, who represented the Caldwell brothers, centered his argument on the promises of freedom contained in the new Massachusetts Constitution. And it is therefore unnecessary to consider whether the promises of freedom to Quaco, on the part of his master and mistress, amounted to a manumission or not. Slavery existed in Massachusetts from the earliest Colonial days. 18. Other reports suggest that her suit was prompted when Bett's mistress, Mrs. Hannah Ashley, attempted to strike Bett's sister with a hot shovel, but struck and burned Bett when she intervened. As historian John Cushing concluded, there is "ample evidence" that the Quock Walker cases were a significant step toward the end of slavery in Massachusetts. "Slavery in Massachusetts" is one of Henry David Thoreau's most important essays. 0 likes. According to an article in the Boston Globe, as a result, slavery was slowly phased out in the state: âThe end was neither swift nor definitive. Literature regarding the development and abolition of slavery in Massachusetts and other northern states is vast and complex. Mum Bett worked for many years as a beloved domestic servant in the household of Theodore Sedgwick. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was signed under President Fillmore, which required the return of escaped slaves residing in free states to their masters. However, after the Quock Walker case, it was clear that a local (i.e. Many famous buildings and structures in New England were built with money from Massachusetts’ slave trade, such as Faneuil Hall in Boston, which was constructed by wealthy slave trader and merchant Peter Faneuil, whose family regularly sold slaves in public auctions on nearby Merchants Row. In 1681, John Saffin and other Boston merchants wrote to the shipmaster William Welstead, warning him that the authorities planned to seize a slave ship heading for Rhode Island, and that he should intercept the vessel and direct it to Nantasket to offload its human cargo. Agnes, supra note 16 at 11. This provided the basis for abolishing slavery in Massachusetts, but it clearly was not the intent of the Legislature to do so. The following year, in June 1782, Jennison petitioned the General Court (the official name of the Massachusetts legislature) for reinstatement of the case he had lost by default ten months earlier. The Sheffield Declaration has been posted online by The Trustees of Reservations, the organization that owns the John Ashley House. http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/berkshires/ashley-house.html, 15. Id. I have not been able to find anything on where he came from or who his parents may have been. Slavery in Massachusetts Henry David Thoreau, american author, poet, philosopher (1817-1862) This ebook presents «Slavery in Massachusetts», from Henry David Thoreau. Massachusetts. 7. This form only gathers feedback about the website. Universities and colleges in the Americas and Europe are examining their historical ties to the Atlantic slave trade and slavery. [T]hese sentiments [that are favorable to the natural rights of mankind] led the framers of our constitution of government - by which the people of this commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves to each other - to declare - that all men are born free and equal; and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws as well as his life and property. 11. emboldened enslaved persons of color to demand manumission or wage compensation from their owners - [or] simply to walk away from them." The jury found "that the said Quork is a Freeman and not the proper Negro slave of [Jennison]," and awarded Walker damages of 50 pounds. […] Like “The free men of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at once.” As the rhetoric supporting independence of the colonists from Great Britain intensified in the colony of Massachusetts, some noted the glaring inconsistency of arguing for the rights of Englishmen while owning slaves. This set … There are many secondary sources about the Mum Bett case; electronic sources include: http://www.masshist.org/longroad/01slavery/bett.htm; http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/legal/spotlight.html; 12. Rebecca is a freelance journalist and history lover who got her start in journalism working for small-town newspapers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire after she graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a B.A. As discussed in the section of this website entitled The Massachusetts Judicial System, the Supreme Judicial Court was both a trial court and an appellate court during its early history. However, Chief Justice Cushing recorded his charge in his notebooks, and the entire charge is reprinted in Cushing, supra note 3, at 132-133. Three court proceedings followed. Justice Cushing remained on that Court until 1810, and participated in deciding the case of Marbury v. Madison.  This section introduces the legal status of slavery in Massachusetts prior to 1780, the Mum Bett case of 1781, and the Quock Walker case. Winthrop, a slave owner, helped write the first law legalizing slavery in North America. This case - actually a series of three cases -- began as a freedom suit based on a promise of freedom or manumission, but resulted in a sweeping declaration by Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice William Cushing that the institution of slavery was incompatible with the principles of liberty and legal equality articulated in the new Massachusetts Constitution. . I am passionate about finding out. The constitution proposed in 1778 would have recognized slavery as a legal institution, and excluded free African Americans from voting. The graves of Theodore Sedgwick and his wife, Pamela Sedgwick, are in the center. Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first slave-holding colony in New England. See, e.g., Zilversmit, supra note 1 at 100 - 103. This case was tried before a jury in the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas. But not before some of those enslaved had been sold back to the Caribbean so an owner could avoid a difficult financial loss.â, Sources: Yankee slavers avoided the monopoly by smuggling slaves in through small coastal harbors. Historians estimate that between 1755 and 1764, the Massachusetts slave population was approximately 2.2 percent of the total population; the slave population was generally concentrated in the industrial and coastal towns. In 1763, Caldwell died and his widow married Nathaniel Jennison. . Original court records are in the custody of the Supreme Judicial Court, Division of Archives and Records Preservation. The first certain reference to African slavery was in connection with the bloody Pequot War in 1637. This is done through the passage of the Body of Liberties. There is no exact date that marks the end of slavery in Massachusetts and no specific law that suddenly brought it to a halt. Fiercely anti-slavery, Thoreau spoke out against the practice in lectures and print, famously refused to pay poll tax in part because he did not want to finance slavery, defended John Brown, and was an underground railroad stop. . Meltzer, Milton. Because Massachusetts slaves were considered both as property and as persons before the law, slaves could institute and prosecute lawsuits in the courts against their master (the defendant) who would be obliged to demonstrate their lawful title to ownership of their slave. Popular sentiment and the courts were pro-abolition, however. The exact date slaves first entered Massachusetts is unknown but many sources suggest Samuel Maverick was the first slaveholder in the colony after he arrived in early Boston in 1624 with two slaves. According to the Massachusetts Historical Society website, it wasn’t long before Massachusetts became engaged in what was called the Triangle Trade: âIn 1644 Boston merchants began importing slaves directly from Africa, selling them in the West Indies, and bringing home sugar to make rum, initiating the so-called triangular trade. tags: politics-of-periodicals. Ashley refused. www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/01/18/new_englands_scarlet_s_for_slavery/ Between the years 1755 and 1764, the slave population in Massachusetts rose to 2.2 percent, with most of these slaves living in industrial and coastal towns. This included Maine since it was still part of Massachusetts. As noted, many historians and legal scholars have studied the Quock Walker cases. Grandfather that is stated as being half negro half Indian in the history of Conway, Massachutsetts. The Salem Witch Trials Victims: Who Were They? Both slaves won their cases after the jury agreed that slavery was inconsistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, thus stripping slavery of any legal protection in Massachusetts forever. For example, James Otis, a leading proponent of colonial independence, wrote in a highly regarded and influential 1764 pamphlet that "The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black. Sources 1. on Slavery in Massachusetts. What happened instead was a series of events, starting with the ratification of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which included an article that states: âAll men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.â. The case was not widely reported, and changing economic conditions and public opinion increasingly hostile to slavery doubtless played an important role in slavery's demise. An essay based on a speech Thoreau gave at an anti-slavery rally at on July 4, 1854, after the reenslavement in Boston, Massachusetts of fugitive slave Anthony Burns. 10. Native Americans in the Revolutionary War. Latour, Francie. the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties."Â. Her tombstone stands in the innermost circle of what is known as the "Sedgwick Pie.". In 1641, Governor John Winthrop, a slave owner himself, helped write the first law legalizing slavery in North America, the Massachusetts Bodies of Liberty, which the General Court passed on December 10, 1641. This was followed by numerous laws governing slaves and their activities, such as marriage laws between slaves, curfews and taxes on slaves imported into Massachusetts. Slavery: A World History. During the 1770's, Mum Bett was a slave in the household of Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, a prominent citizen who at that time also served as a judge of the Berkshire Court of Common Pleas. In 1773, slaves themselves also took a stance against their bondage when a group of Massachusetts slaves petitioned the General Court to end slavery, comparing their desire for freedom to the colonist’s struggle for independence from British government. We will use this information to improve the site. 1641 Massachusetts becomes the first colony to legalize slavery. 21. In the second case, tried during the same court session, Jennison sued Caldwell's brothers for interfering with his property; Jennison claimed the brothers had unlawfully enticed Walker away for their own benefit. James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764), available at www.teachingamericanhistory.org. Each side appealed these contradictory verdicts, and the two cases were placed on the docket of the Supreme Judicial Court in 1781. Her gravestone includes the words: "She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. Native Americans of the Pequot Tribe were being pushed off their land by the European settlements. However, during the years 1781 to 1783, in three related cases known today as "the Quock Walker case," the Supreme Judicial Court applied the principle of judicial review to abolish slavery. 19. Conceived and ratified by a unique and democratic process, the Constitution "justified and indeed compelled" judges to act so as to enforce its provisions over laws and customs that otherwise conflicted with it. 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