Seventeen eighty-three: The turning point in the law of slavery and freedom in Massachusetts

New England Quarterly

Volumn 75, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 24-50

  Blanck, Emily ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61249537936     PISSN: 00284866     EISSN: 19372213     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1559880     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Virginia and Maryland were the next mainland English colonies to enact slave codes (in the 1660s). See Leon A. Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 34-38,61-62. Vermont freed its slaves through its constitution, but in 1783 it was not yet part of the United States. In addition, it should be noted that Pennsylvania passed a gradual emancipation act before Massachusetts in 1780, but Massachusetts'judicial decree ended slavery wholly, so that no master could claim a man or woman as a slave after 1783.
2. George Henry Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1866);
3. William O'Brien, "Did the Jennison Case Outlaw Slavery in Massachusetts?" William and Mary Quarterly 17 (1960): 219-41;
4. John D. Cushing, "The Cushing Court and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts: More Notes on the 'Quock Walker Case,'" American Journal of Legal History (1961): 118-44;
5. Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967),
6. and "Quok Walker, Mumbet, and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 25 (1968): 614-24;
7. Robert Spector, "The Quock Walker Cases (1781-1783) - Slavery, Its Abolition and Negro Citizenship in Early Massachusetts," Journal of Negro History 53 (1968): 12-32.
8. Zilversmit, "Quok Walker, Mumbet, and the Abolition of Slavery," p. 614.
9. Spector, "The Quock Walker Cases," p. 15;
10. Nathaniel Sargeant, "A Bill against Slaver)'," The Massachusetts Archives Collection, 142:58.
11. O'Brien, "Did the Jennison Case Outlaw Slavery in Massachusetts?" pp. 219-41;
12. Cush-ing, "The Cushing Court and Abolition," pp. 118-44.
13. Priscilla v. Nathan Simmons (1722) (see "Slavery in Essex County," Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, vol. 7 [Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1865], p. 73);
14. William Cushing Papers, Notes on Law Cases, 1783, microfilm reel 1, p. 98,
15. Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color, p. 95;
16. "Declaration of Rights," Massachusetts State Constitution, 1780.
17. Cushing, Notes on Law Cases, pp. 98-99.
18. Cushing, '"The Cushing Court and Abolition," pp. 118-44;
19. Jackson v. Phillips et al., 14 Allen (Mass.) 563-64 (1867) (that is, Massachusetts Reports: Reports on Cases Determined and Argued in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts [Boston: Little, Brown, 1867], 14:563-64, as reported by Charles Allen);
20. Sylvia Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 93-94;
21. Court Report, SCDAH, 1784-55-21.
22. For a thorough discussion of the legal consciousness of black Bostonians, see Scott Hancock, "The Law Will Make You Smart': Legal Consciousness, Rights Rhetoric, and African American Identity Formation in Massachusetts, 1641-1855" (Ph.D. diss., University of New Hampshire, 1999).
23. and Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 60-65.
24. Paul Finkelman. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), p. 10.
25. Excterv. Hanchett, Court of Common Pleas Report, SJC ease no. 158594.
26. "Certificate from Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery," 6 October 1792, Sedgwick Papers I, vol. B, box 2, folder 5, MHS.
27. Legal Papers of John Adams, 1:229.
28. William Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760-1830 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975)
29. See also Morton Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).
30. See The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. l, 1760-76, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 505.
31. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: Norton, 1993), p. 304.
32. Moore, Notes on Slavery in Massachusetts, pp. 124-25.
33. Mass. Archives Coll., 7:133.
34. "O'Brien, "Did the Jennison Case Outlaw Slavery in Massachusetts?" pp. 227-28.
35. and Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery, pp. 231-36.
36. Carlos E. González, "Reinterpreting Statutory Interpretation," North Carolina Law Review 74 (March 1996): 729-30.
37. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1780, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford et al., 34 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1904-37), vol. 28 (1785), p. 239;
38. Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, ed. Edmund C. Burnett, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1936), 8:622 n. 5.
39. Staughton Lynd, Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution: Ten Essays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), p. 205.
40. John P. Kaminski, ed., A Necessary Evil? Slavery and the Debate over the Constitution (Madison, Wise: Madison House, 1995), p. 65;
41. Max Farrand and David Maydole Matteson, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, revised ed., 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 2:443,46
42. Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race" in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).
43. Nash, Forging Freedom, p. 134.
44. John Daniels, In Freedom's Birthplace (1914; reprinted, New York: Amo Press and the New York Times, 1969).
45. Finkelman, An Imperfect Union, pp. 80-81.
46. Thomas Ames, Case of the Slave-Child, Med: Report of the Arguments of Counsel, and of the Opinion of the Court in the Case of Commonwealth Vs. Aves; Tried and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1835);
47. Commonwealth v. Aves, 18 Pick (Mass.) 215-16 (1836);
48. Lewis Bigelow, A Digest of the Reported Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1825), p. 498.