Way back in Episode 58, we looked at the way slavery was seen in the colonial era. The basic point in that episode was that slavery was pretty generally accepted. The Quakers had begun to express moral reservations about the institution, but by and large, colonists did not question the institution and there was not much of any abolition movement. The notion that one’s birth largely established one’s station in life was a generally accepted norm.
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| Mum Bett |
Since the revolution and independence were based on the ideals of inalienable rights and equality, the institution of slavery became much more suspect. While the Revolution had not really focused on ending slavery, people saw how incompatible the institution was with the principles of the revolution.
Vermont declared its own independence during the war. Its constitution was the first to ban slavery explicitly in 1777. But since none of the other states recognized Vermont as a sovereign state, it was debatable whether this prohibition even would be recognized.
Pennsylvania was the only state that took action to end slavery during the war. Back in Episode 241 we covered the 1780 Pennsylvania law that set slavery in the state on a slow path to abolition. The law did not free any slaves, but provided that their children would be free once they reached adulthood. As the existing generation of slaves grew old and died, the institution would die with it.
Massachusetts Slavery
Along with Pennsylvania, Massachusetts was a center of the abolition movement in the decades leading up to the Civil War. But during the Revolutionary War, slavery was still legal and well established in the state. Slave owners had settled in the region even before the 1630 founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Boston merchants had gotten involved early in the slave trade, carrying slaves from Africa to the West Indies, the Carolinas, and Virginia.
Although slavery in Massachusetts did not grow like it did in southern colonies, there was a substantial slave population throughout the colonial era. The colony passed special laws regulating the behavior of slaves. One early law which put limits on what slaves could do, prefaced its law by saying the rules “which the law of God, established in Israel concerning such people, doth morally require.” In other words, slavery was sanctioned by the Bible. By the time of the Revolution, slaves made up about 2% of the population.
As the movement toward revolution evolved in Massachusetts, and words like liberty and freedom were being thrown about, those held in slavery naturally thought that such ideas should apply to them. In 1773 a group of enslaved Bostonians drafted a petition to Colonial Governor Thomas Hutchinson, asserting they shared a common and natural right to be free, just as the white colonists demanded.
In 1774, two more petitions went to the new Governor Thomas Gage, asserting that they had a natural right to freedom. They also called on the governor to recognize their basic rights. In 1777, a similar petition made similar demands to the state legislature. All of these petitions were ignored. The government, for a whole range of reasons, was unwilling to deal with the issue of slavery.
When Massachusetts adopted its first State Constitution in 1780, Article I read:
All 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.
Those lines were not directed at the institution of slavery. The thinking behind them really was that of the rights of the former colonists which had been threatened by Britain. There was no mention of slavery or race in the Constitution. Since slavery was still widely practiced within the state, one would think it would have been explicitly banned if that was the intent.
After the adoption of the Constitution, people continued to hold others in bondage. This led to several court cases to determine if the language in Article I of the Constitution actually did mean that all men being born free and equal with certain unalienable rights meant that enslavement could not be legally enforced in the state.
Mum Bett
The first legal test was brought by a woman known to most as Mum Bett. She was born a slave in New York in 1744. Her owner gave her as a wedding gift to his son-in-law, John Ashley, who lived in Sheffield, Massachusetts.
Bett worked as a domestic servant for the family, but of course heard public readings of many documents during the Revolution that proclaimed liberty and equality for all. Her owner, Colonel Ashley, had served as a local judge and had moderated the meeting that produced the Sheffield Resolves against British tyranny and in support of individual rights. In part it declared that “mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other.”
Inspired by such language, Bett believed those words also applied to her. In 1781, she approached a local attorney, Theodore Sedgwick, who lived nearby.
Sedgwick had served as a major in the Continental Army. He had also held a seat in the state legislature and in 1780 had served as a delegate to the Continental Congress.
Sedgwick had been a slave owner himself, but was amenable to bringing this lawsuit. Bett and another male slave named Brom, also owned by Colonel Ashley, were named as plaintiffs in a suit against Ashley filed in May, 1781.
Suits brought by slaves seeking freedom were not unprecedented. In the past slaves had brought suits based on other legal issues such as the mother’s slave status, contractual agreements, or other technicalities.
This case was different, Sedgwick filed a writ of replevin, essentially demanding that the court order Ashley to turn over property that was not his. Specifically, his ownership was not legal because Bett and Brom owned themselves as free people. Sedgwick based his argument on Article I of the State Constitution.
It took several months for the case to go to trial. On August 22, 1781, a jury agreed that Bett and Brom were free people. In addition to their freedom, Ashley had to pay each of them 30 shillings in damages.
Quock Walker
Another case that was litigated in Massachusetts around the same time was that of Quock Walker. The name derives from an African name: Kwaku in Akan, which means in Ghanaian “boy born on Wednesday.” Although his parents were brought from Africa to America as slaves, Walker was born into slavery in America. His owner, James Caldwell, had promised him his freedom at age 25. This was actually rather common. Many slave owners treated children of slaves as indentured servants, held until adulthood.
Caldwell died when the boy was only 10 years old. His widow remarried Nathaniel Jennison. Then she died when Walker was 19. When he turned 25, Jennison refused to free him. A few years later, in 1781, Walker ran away and began living on a farm that belonged to Seth and John Caldwell, the brothers of his original owner.
Jennison found out where the runaway was staying. He gathered several of his friends, went to the Caldwell farm, and found Walker. They beat the young man severely, and forcibly took him back to Jennison’s farm.
This action kicked off two lawsuits. First, Walker brought suit against Jennison for assault and battery in June, 1781. The premise of his case was that he was a free man under the Massachusetts Constitution and that Jennison had no right to beat him and drag him away from the place that he chose to live. Walker sued Jennison for 300 pounds in damages.
In his defense, Jennison produced paperwork proving that he owned Walker as a slave and that a disciplinary beating was well within his legal rights. Jennison also filed a lawsuit against the Caldwells. His complaint accused the brothers of enticing Walker to desert his legal master so that they could benefit by employing him.
The two cases reached contradictory results. The jury in the case brought by Walker determined that he was, in fact, a free man under the Massachusetts Constitution and awarded him 50 pounds in damages against Jennison for the assault on his person. In the second case, the jury found for Jennison, awarding him 25 pounds against the Caldwells for luring away his slave. For some reason, in this second case, the defense never raised the constitutional issue of Walker’s freedom.
Both parties appealed their cases. That fall, an appeals court took up both cases. Jennison’s appeal ended up being dismissed on technical grounds. The Caldwells’ appeal of Jennison’s case did get heard. While the lower court simply tried to look at the facts of whether the Caldwells had actually tried to entice Walker, the appeals court was more interested in taking up the issue of whether Walker was Jennison’s property in the first place.
The arguments on appeal became a great debate over the morality of slavery - each side citing the Bible and appealing to natural law. The judge asked the jury to focus on the “free and equal” clause in the Constitution. In the end, the jury found that Walker was a free man under the Constitution, and that therefore the Caldwells could not have illegally enticed him from his owner. He did not have an owner.
In June, 1782, Jennison petitioned the state legislature for a reinstatement of the appeal that he had lost on technical grounds. By that time there were several petitions before the legislature demanding a clear declaration that slavery in Massachusetts was not legal. One petition even argued that slavery had never been legal and that all slaves should be compensated for their past service.
The legislature was not sure what to do. In the end, they did what they did best with the past petitions on slavery. They took no action on any of the petitions, including Jennison’s. This meant that he was liable to pay the damages to Walker for the assault.
That, however, was not the end of the matter. The Massachusetts Attorney General Robert Treat Paine, brought a criminal indictment against Jennison for his assault on Walker.
The evidence of the assault was indisputable by this time. Jennison had already testified about the beatings in earlier cases and had freely admitted to them. The defense, once again, brought up the evidence that showed Walker had been Jennison’s slave and that the beating as part of a disciplinary punishment was permissible under the law. The defense pointed out that there were still state laws on the books regarding the treatment of slaves and that the defendant had no way of knowing the Constitution would later be interpreted to have ended slavery in the state.
The judge’s instructions to the jury essentially said that the assault was not in dispute and that the Constitution had guaranteed that Walker was a free man. Therefore, the jury need not consider any arguments that the beating was a justifiable disciplining of a slave. Unsurprisingly, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.
These cases made clear to all that slavery was no longer legal in Massachusetts. Courts would not enforce any such actions, and would punish anyone who attempted to hold a person in slavery. This is not to say that all were free. Many people, including many African Americans, continued to be held to indentures. Poor people could indenture themselves or their children for many reasons, including payment of debts, and often these indentures were entered into involuntarily. Indentures would allow many to be held to service for a period of years. Chattel slavery, however that began at birth and that was passed on to children, had come to an end in Massachusetts.
Northern States Follow
The rest of the New England states also moved in the direction of ending slavery. New Hampshire’s 1783 constitution used language very similar to that of Massachusetts: proclaiming all men free and equal and with natural rights. However, there is not record of any court cases that applied these principles to slaves. That said, slavery seemed to be on the way out. In 1790, there were only 158 slaves reported to the Census. By 1800 there were eight, and by 1810, it was zero. Clearly slavery was being phased out, even without a specific statute or landmark case.
Antislavery sentiment in Connecticut also took hold. The colony had banned the importation of slaves in 1774. It considered emancipation bills in 1777, 1779, and 1780, but none of these passed. The owners of slaves were unwilling to take the financial loss. Finally, in 1784, a much more gradual bill passed, similar to the one that had passed in Pennsylvania. Children born after March 1 of that year, would automatically become free at age 25. This would allow slavery to die with the current generation of slaves.
Rhode Island had more slaves than any other New England state. Slaves accounted for more than 6% of the population during the Revolutionary War. There were several large plantations that ran on slave labor, and a large merchant fleet that engaged in the slave trade. A fairly large Quaker population, however, provided a center for the growing movement for emancipation.
At around the same time Connecticut passed its emancipation bill, Rhode Island passed a similar one. Any child of a slave born after March 1 would be an apprentice until age 21 for boys or 18 for girls. This would force the existing generation of slaves to be the last.
New York addressed the slavery issue in 1785. Aaron Burr led the fight for immediate emancipation of all slaves. Instead, the Assembly passed a more gradual bill that granted freedom to the children of slaves born after 1785. This bill languished in the Senate over fears of black people getting the right to vote. It eventually passed but then died after a veto. A gradual emancipation bill in New York would not pass until 1799.
Similarly in New Jersey an abolition movement took hold during the war. Governor Livingston proposed a gradual abolition bill in 1778, which failed. A growing abolition movement in the 1780s kept the issue alive, but could not get a law passed. It was not until 1804 until the state passed a gradual emancipation bill for the children of slaves.
Southern Slavery
The six southern states, of course, maintained slavery. While support for abolition in the south gained a little ground during and immediately after the American Revolution, the economic importance of slave labor made any attempts, even at gradual emancipation, just about impossible. Succeeding generations, however, strengthened support for what became known and the peculiar institution until abolition was finally forced on these states after the Civil War.
For a time, many thought that Virginia might pass a law shortly after the Revolution that would outlaw slavery gradually, much like what happened in most northern states. George Washington famously granted freedom to his slaves upon his death. As early as 1786, Washington wrote letters in support of Virginia adopting a gradual emancipation law. Despite his moral qualms, Washington never got to the point where he was willing to free his own slaves during his lifetime. He also spent considerable time and money attempting to track down slaves who escaped his service.
Other prominent Virginians like Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and James Madison also continued to own slaves, even though each of them were conflicted in light of the principles for which they had fought. The generation that fought in the Revolution, however, seemed to be the high water mark for the support of abolition in the southern states.
During this immediate post-war era, Virginia, at least, took the small step in a 1783 law that confirmed the emancipation of slaves who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Many slave owners either permitted slaves to join the army or sent them as substitutes when drafted. Virginia law prohibited slaves from enlisting, but as a practice did not prevent it.
When the war ended and the army disbanded, many owners attempted to force the returning veterans back into slavery. The Virginia legislature prohibited this by statute, thus guaranteeing freedom for any soldier who had enlisted at the request of his owner or as a substitute for his owner and who had also completed his term of service. Virginia also passed a law around the same time providing for the voluntary manumission of slaves by their owners. That was as far as it got.
In the deeper south, the Carolinas and Georgia, there was never any serious effort to abolish slavery during this period. While southern patriots proclaimed the same rhetoric of freedom and equality, they seemed to have a harder time applying those principles to slavery.
Some veterans of the war came home with abolitionist ideals. John Laurens, killed at the end of the war, was a good example of this. Those who survived the war quickly accepted that they could not convince a majority, or even a sizable minority, to make any real changes to the institution of slavery in the south.
The opposition to ending slavery in the south was likely the result of the economic dependence on slave labor. Large plantations with such a large investment in slave workforce could not see how that way of life could continue with paid labor. There was also a great concern about free blacks. Racist ideas that blacks were simply incapable of living unsupervised by owners became much more vocal during this period. So while slavery did become more controversial, even in the south, the vast majority only grew in their determination to maintain the institution.
This north-south divide on the issue would only grow more stark over the next few generations. It was only another decisive war, four score and seven years later that would resolve this debate by force, once and for all.
Next week: The Continental Congress looks west as it considers the establishment of the Northwest Territory.
- - -
Next Episode 334 Land Ordinance of 1784
Previous Episode 331 Washington Goes Home
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Further Reading
Websites
Slavery in the North: http://slavenorth.com
The Struggle for Freedom: https://www.masshist.org/features/endofslavery/struggle
The Legal End of Slavery in Massachusetts https://www.masshist.org/features/endofslavery/end_MA
Massachusetts Constitution https://malegislature.gov/Laws/Constitution
Jennison v. Caldwell – Abolition and the Role of Courts in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts https://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2021/07/jennison-v-caldwell-abolition-and-the-role-of-courts-in-eighteenth-century-massachusetts
Cushing, John D. “The Cushing Court and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts: More Notes on the ‘Quock Walker Case.’” The American Journal of Legal History, vol. 5, no. 2, 1961, pp. 118–44. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/844116
Commonwealth v. Jennison: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/commonwealth-v-nathaniel-jennison
Winthrop, Robert C., et al. “Special Meeting, April, 1874. Letter of Louis Agassiz; Description of the Washington Medals; The Commonwealth V. Nathaniel Jennison; Note by Chief Justice Gray; Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 13, 1873, pp. 282–304. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25079475?seq=11
Zilversmit, Arthur. “Quok Walker, Mumbet, and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 4, 1968, pp. 614–24. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1916801
Sesay, Chernoh M. “The Revolutionary Black Roots of Slavery’s Abolition in Massachusetts.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 87, no. 1, 2014, pp. 99–131. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43285055
Spector, Robert M. “The Quock Walker Cases (1781-83) -- Slavery, Its Abolition, and Negro Citizenship in Early Massachusetts.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 53, no. 1, 1968, pp. 12–32. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2716388
Blanck, Emily. “Seventeen Eighty-Three: The Turning Point in the Law of Slavery and Freedom in Massachusetts.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 1, 2002, pp. 24–51. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1559880
Wiecek, William M. “Antislavery during and after the American Revolution.” The Sources of Anti-Slavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848, Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 40–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt207g6m0.7
Virginia Act Freeing Enslaved People who served as Soldiers, 1783: https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/items/show/138
Virginia Slaves Freed After 1782: https://freeafricanamericans.com/virginiafreeafter1782.htm
The Virginia Manumission Act, 1782 https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/ls261/chapter/ch-5-3-the-virginia-manumission-act-1782
“From George Washington to John Francis Mercer, 9 September 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-04-02-0232.
Free eBooks
(from archive.org unless noted)
[Archive.org has been offline due to hacking problems, therefore, I've been unable to find new resources there for this episode].
Moore, George H. Notes on the history of slavery in Massachusetts. New York City: D. Appleton & Co. 1866 (Google Books).
The Connection of Massachusetts with Slavery and the Slave-trade, Worcester, Mass: Charles Hamilton, 1886.
Books Worth Buying
(links to Amazon.com unless otherwise noted)*
Finkelman, Paul Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, Routledge, 2013.
Larson, Edward J. American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation 1765-1795, WW Norton & Co. 2023.
MacLeod, Duncan J. Slavery, Race and the American Revolution, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975.
Rose, Ben Z. Mother of Freedom: Mum Bett and the Roots of Abolition, Treeline Press, 2009.
Tinucci, Malcolm Mum Bett: A Slave Who Won Her Own Freedom, self-published, 2022.
Wiecek, William M. The Sources of Anti-Slavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848, Cornell University Press, 1977.
* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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