The court set Bett and Brom free and awarded them 30 shillings damages. This case was a direct challenge to the very existence of slavery in Massachusetts. View all posts by Rebecca Beatrice Brooks, Abigail Williams: The Mysterious Afflicted Girl. However, these cases were not decided on the basis of any "natural right" to freedom; instead, the courts required a specific point of law to decide in favor of a slave, such as a master's broken promise to grant freedom, or the questionable slave status of the individual's mother. 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. His name is Caleb Sharp, born 1729 died 1799. By 1780, nearly thirty slaves had sued their master for their freedom, most during the years following 1764. Slavery and Anti-slavery in Massachusetts and New England Dutch merchants had introduced African slaves to the Virginia Colony as early as 1619, but according to the earliest records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first shipment of enslaved Africans to New England was not until 1638. 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.\" … However, Chief Justice Cushing recorded his charge in his notebooks, and the entire charge is reprinted in Cushing, supra note 3, at 132-133. 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. In 1696 the British Parliament revoked the monopoly held by the Royal African Company, enabling Massachusetts merchants and shipmasters to engage freely in the slave trade.”. 21. Upon her death in 1829, Mum Bett was buried in the Sedgwick family plot in Stockbridge. www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/01/18/new_englands_scarlet_s_for_slavery/ Through Ancestry.com I have come this far and found redemption in Caleb. The slave quarters beside the grandest eighteenth-century mansion in Massachusetts, that of the Royall family in Medford, seem an aberration. The jury convicted Jennison, and the court ordered him to pay a fine of 40 shillings. See, e.g., Zilversmit, supra note 1 at 100 - 103. Mum Bett, aka Elizabeth Freeman, Watercolor on Ivory Painted by Susan Ridley Sedgwick circa 1812. The summary of court proceedings presented here relies primarily on court papers and John Cushing's article on the Quock Walker cases. Various forms of slavery in New England predated the establishment of the Plymouth Colony in 1620 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, but once established, colonists in both jurisdictions captured, purchased, and traded … In it, he asked to end slavery. I LATELY ATTENDED a meeting of the citizens of Concord, expecting, as one among many, to speak on the subject of slavery in Massachusetts; but I was surprised and disappointed to find that what had called my townsmen together was the destiny of Nebraska, and not of Massachusetts, and that what I had to say would be entirely out of order. 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. This article became the subject of a series of landmark cases starting in 1781: Brom and Bett vs. Ashley, Jennison vs. Caldwell, Quock Walker vs. Jennison and Commonwealth vs. Jennison, during which two slaves, citing the article, sued their owners for their freedom, with one slave even charging his owner with assault and battery for beating him. In 1641 Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first of Britain's mainland colonies to make slavery legal. 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. Jennison was indicted in September 1781, though the case did not come before the Supreme Judicial Court until April 1783. 8. Slaves too were active in seeking the end of slavery in Massachusetts. This case was tried before a jury in the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas. 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. 17. In short, without resorting to implication in constructing the constitution, slavery is in my judgment as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence. The write ordered Ashley to release Bett and Brom to the Sheriff because they were not Ashley's legitimate property. 3. 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). 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. See Elaine MacEachern, Emancipation of Slavery in Massachusetts: A Reexamination 1770 - 1790, 55 The Journal of Negro History 289 (1970); Zilversmit, supra note 1, at 103 - 105. Sedgwick "Pie" in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. 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