Emancipation in Massachusetts
Inquiry Question: What tactics did enslaved people in Massachusetts in the 1700s use to free themselves?
- Background context for students
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There is a common belief that slavery was less brutal or nonexistent in the North and that the North was a place where enslaved people could go to be free. However, in reality, Massachusetts and other northern states benefited from enslaved people’s work from the beginning. Boston Harbor was an important trading port for slave ships that would stop there before continuing to the South. And many of the important leaders in the North owned slaves themselves such as John Hancock.
Phillis Wheatley negotiated her freedom from her enslaver in 1773 Enslaved peoples in the North as well as the South resisted their enslavement in ways both big and small. Enslaved people regularly broke tools, stopped work or worked slowly, and they ran away as a way to prevent their enslavers
from benefiting from their labor. They also tried to build and keep families, maintain religious practices and languages, and educate themselves. They created communities and tried to remain connected to their African roots. In addition, enslaved people used the courts and legal avenues to become free. They wrote petitions to local and state governments, hired lawyers and fought for their freedom in court, bought their own freedom, and negotiated with their enslavers to manumit them–that is, free them without exchanging money.
Boston newspapers featured ads for enslaved people who had run away Despite their efforts, white enslavers worked just as hard to keep control over those who had found ways out of enslavement. Northern cities like Boston created rules saying enslaved people could not be out late at night without written permission, and used patrols to enforce the rules.
Enslavers also placed “fugitive slave” ads in newspapers. These ads–written after an enslaved person had run away or fled from their enslaver–encouraged white people to find and return enslaved peoples to their enslavers. They were detailed and offered rewards for the capture and return of individuals who had escaped. These ads showed how valuable enslaved peoples were to white enslavers. Written by enslavers, the ads often describe runaways in racist, dehumanizing ways. However, as readers, we can try to read the ads from the perspective of the enslaved – what skills does the ad tell us they had? Does it suggest the reason why they ran away, or methods they took to protect themselves? Running away was dangerous and risky–if caught, the person could be harmed or sold far away. Each ad is a glimpse into one person’s brave bid for freedom, and the ways in which they tried to accomplish it.
Source Set
In the fall of 1724, an enslaved man named Pompey self-liberated by boarding a ship docked in Plymouth, MA, in the middle of the night. The crew aboard the ship discovered Pompey once they were at sea. When the ship reached its destination of Porto, Portugal, the crew gave a deposition before the British consul, Robert Jackson, on 7 October 1724. In the deposition, they described how and why Pompey hid aboard their ship.
Citation: Deposition of John Cornuck and others regarding Pompey (a freedom seeker), 7 October 1724, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/629.
On 2 April 1765, Jacob Fowle, a white enslaver, placed an advertisement in The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, a newspaper. Fowle was searching for 18-year-old Ishmael, who had run away from Fowle a few days earlier in an effort to free himself. Although he walked with a limp from a foot injury, Ishmael had experience as a soldier and Fowle thought he might try to pass himself off as a soldier again. Fowle offered $4 to anyone who found and returned Ishmael to him.
Citation: The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, 29 April 1765, Page 66, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/dorr/volume/1/sequence/76.
Read a transcript of the enslaver's advertisement searching to capture Dillar.
In 1775, a Black woman named Dillar ran away from Boston with her five-year-old child in an effort to free themselves. Their enslaver, Captain Nathaniel Patten, placed a newspaper advertisement asking others to help him find and re-enslave the pair.
Citation: The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, 6 February 1775 (includes supplement), Page 367, the Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/dorr/volume/4/sequence/749.
In 1773, Peter Bestes, Sambo Freeman, Felix Holbrook, and Chester Joie -- four enslaved men from Taunton, Massachusetts -- wrote a letter to representatives of the Massachusetts General Court (the Legislature), appealing for the freedom of themselves and all other enslaved people in the colony. With their freedom, they planned to establish a settlement on the coast of Africa. In the letter, which was published in newspapers, the men compare their desire for freedom with white colonists' growing revolutionary sentiments.
This was the first of seven petitions for abolition enslaved and free Black men sent the MA General Court in the 1770s. None of the petitions were successful, but all furthered the anti-slavery debate in MA and set an important precedent for collective action that later Black activists would continue to use.
Citation: Boston, April 20th, 1773. Sir, The efforts made by the legislative [sic] of this province ..., Boston, 1773, Circular letter signed "In behalf of our fellow slaves in this province, and by order of their committee ...", Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/443.
In this document a group of enslaved people from Massachusetts petitions the colonial governor General Thomas Gage, the Council, and the Massachusetts House of Representatives, asserting that they share a common and natural right to be free with white citizens.
This was one of seven petitions for abolition enslaved and free Black men sent the MA General Court in the 1770s. None of the petitions were successful, but all but all furthered the anti-slavery debate in MA and set an important precedent for collective action that later Black activists would continue to use.
Citation: Petition for freedom to Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage, His Majesty's Council, and the House of Representatives, 25 May 1774, From the Jeremy Belknap papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/549.
Read an excerpt where Wheatley Peters discusses her freedom.
On October 18, 1773, Phillis Wheatley Peters wrote a letter to Colonel David Wooster of New Haven, C. On the second page of the letter she describes her new freedom and the importance of her book sales as a means of supporting herself.
Wheatley Peters had previously been enslaved in the home of Johnathan and Susannah Wheatley, a wealthy Boston family. She had traveled to London with the Wheatleys' son, Nathaniel, to promote her book of poems. Johnathan Wheatley manumitted Wheatley Peters before she returned to Boston. To manumit means to agree to free someone from slavery without exchanging any money. In her letter, Wheatley Peters describes sending a copy of her freedom papers to a London lawyer as a means of protecting her freedom.
(She later married a free Black man named John Peters, which is why we refer to her as "Phillis Wheatley Peters.")
Citation: Phillis Wheatley to David Wooster, 18 October 1774, Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/database/771.
In 1756, James Chesley paid 600 pounds to enslave a 16-year-old Black boy named Corydon. Chesley and his wife Lydia purchased Corydon from a white man named William Shackleford. In 1778, Corydon, then 38-years-old, paid 75 pounds to buy his freedom from his enslavers. The 1756 bill-of-sale and the 1778 freedom receipt are written on two sides of the same piece of paper.
Citation: Receipt from William Shackford to James Chesley for sale of Corradan (Corydon) (an enslaved person), 19 July 1756, Page 2 is a receipt of payment in exchange for freedom of Corydon signed by Otis Baker, "one of the administrators," 13 April 1778. From the Jeremy Belknap papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/database/545.
Elizabeth Freeman sued for her freedom from her enslaver, Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, in 1781. Her case set the legal precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. Her lawyer, Theodore Sedgwick, argued that Freeman should be freed under the Bill of Rights of the Massachusetts Constitution, which reads, "all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights."
Freeman is often referred to as "Mumbet," used by the Sedgwick family and other white people when talking about her. We think it is important to call her by the name that she chose for herself as a free woman.
Citation: Elizabeth Freeman ("Mumbet") Miniature portrait, watercolor on ivory by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, 1811, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/23.
In 1781, Quock Walker liberated himself from slavery when he ran away from his enslaver, Nathaniel Jennison, in Worcester County. Walker had been promised his freedom when he turned 25 and his enslaver did not honor that promise. Walker then sued Jennison.
William Cushing, the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, kept these legal notes during the Walker v. Jennison trial. It includes notes on context, witness testimonies, and Cushing's interpretation of the case. When Judge Cushing gave the jury instructions, he told them that slavery could not exist under the new Constitution of Massachusetts. The jury found Walker to be a free man.
Citation: Legal notes by William Cushing about the Quock Walker case, [1783], From the William Cushing judicial notebook, Sequence of 13 pages presented--pages 87 [second page 87]-99., Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/630.