History of slavery in Massachusetts

Those who owned the slaves then generally chose to replace the enslavement with some other arrangement, either indentured servitude for a fixed term or conventional, paid employment.

Massachusetts became a leading center for abolitionism in early 19th-century America, with individual activists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass as well as organizations like the Boston Vigilance Committee dedicated to advancing the cause.

The political tensions caused by the collision between abolitionism and pro-slavery forces in the United States led directly to the American Civil War in 1861.

The European enslavement of indigenous peoples in New England began with English sailors travelling though the region in the 16th and early 17th centuries, decades before the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

"[11] Rosier and his shipmates took the captives to London, where they apparently hoped to instruct them in English and extract knowledge of Wabanaki government that might give them an advantage against their European competitors in the race to establish colonies in North America.

Nine years later, in 1614, English sea captain Thomas Hunt captured twenty-four Native Americans during a voyage to New England with John Smith.

"[12] One of Hunt's captives, a man named Tisquantum, defied this goal and eventually found himself in England, where he was able to learn English, return to North America, and famously assist the Plymouth colonists in 1621.

In the early days of the fighting, colonists brought Pequot captives from various small conflicts to the Massachusetts General Court, where they declared them officially enslaved.

They ceased to rely on the General Court and adopted a more ad hoc approach, selling captives into slavery without a legal declaration.

Instead, as historian Margaret Newell has argued, the colonists acted in self-interest and justified their practice after the fact, by referring to existing European notions of a just war (a theory later codified in the Body of Liberties).

[16] As noted by American historian Wendy Warren in her 2016 work New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, "the movement of enslaved and captured people around the Atlantic world also was, by the seventeenth century, an accepted reality.

Israel Stoughton hinted at the grotesque process in a letter to John Winthrop, the Governor of Massachusetts, in 1637: "ther is one [Pequot]... that is the fairest and largest that I saw amongst them... it is my desire to have her for a servant.... Liftenant Davenport also desireth one, to witt a tall one that hath 3 strokes upon her stummach.

As English colonists mobilized militia forces against an indigenous coalition of Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuc communities, they returned to the now familiar tactic of capture and enslavement.

[22] On the indigenous side, the fear of enslavement and sale to sugar plantations in the Caribbean dissuaded participants from surrender and encouraged the weakened nations to continue fighting.

A few months later, in the fall of 1676, a ship named the Seaflower left Boston with 180 "heathen... men, women and children" who had been "sentenced & [condemned] to Perpetuall Servitude & slavery.

[25] The rate of indigenous slavery declined in Massachusetts as the violence of King Philip's War faded and the 18th century began, but the reliance on coerced labor did not end.

[26] In the neighboring colony of Rhode Island, courts often seized indigenous children from mothers, who they deemed "disorderly", and offered them as indentured servants to colonists.

These processes were deeply intertwined: in 1638, the slave ship Desire carried indigenous captives to the Caribbean for sale into slavery and returned with the first documented shipment of enslaved Africans in New England.

"[33] Given the sparse records, lack of a regulatory regime and general indifference to the presence of slavery, it is impossible to know exactly how many enslaved Africans were brought to Massachusetts throughout the colonial period.

[35] Regardless of the exact number, enslaved Africans certainly constituted a significant labor force and a notable portion of the community throughout the colonial period of Massachusetts history.

As a component of the British Empire with a separate jurisdiction, the Massachusetts courts noted, but were not bound by, the decision in England in 1772 of the case Somerset v Stewart, which found that there was no basis for slavery on English soil, as Britain's Parliament had never passed an act specifically authorizing it.

[45] In 1766, John Adams' colleague Benjamin Kent won the first trial in the United States (and Massachusetts) to free a slave (Slew vs.

Chief Justice William Cushing instructed the jury: As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that (it is true) has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established.

This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract ...[49]The Walker case had been opened by the attorney to consider whether a previous master's promise to free Walker gave him a right to freedom after that master had died.

In his charge to the jury, Chief Justice William Cushing stated, "Without resorting to implication in constructing the constitution, slavery is ... as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence."