T H E 
 
 CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 WITH 
 
 SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE. 
 
 READ AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN 
 SOCIETY AT WORCESTER, MASS., OCTOBER 21, 1880. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DEANE 
 
 PRINTED BY CHARLES HAMILTON. 
 No. 311 MAIN STREET. 
 
 1886. 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
THE CONNECTION OF MASSACHUSETTS WITH 
 SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE. 
 
 I NOW propose to read some notes on a subject not new, 
 in fact rather old, and I hope I may not tire the patience 
 of my hearers. The subject is The Connection of Massa 
 chusetts with the Slave-Trade and with Slavery. Grave 
 charges hav.e sometimes been made against Massachusetts 
 in relation to this subject. They were repeated by Jeffer 
 son Davis in his message to the so-called Confederate States, 
 April 29, 1861, x and more recently they have been served 
 up to us anew in a more florid style in the Senate of the 
 United States, in words which I shall now take for my text. 
 In a debate on the 26th of March, 1884, on the subject 
 of "Aid to Common Schools," Mr. Vance of North Caro 
 lina, in reply to a Senator from Massachusetts, after indulg 
 ing in some uncomplimentary remarks in reference to that 
 State, proceeded, "A State that is more responsible under 
 heaven than any other community in this land 2 for the 
 introduction of slavery into this continent, with all the 
 curses that have followed it; that is the nursing mother of 
 the horrors of the middle passage, and that after slavery in 
 Massachusetts was found not to pay sold those slaves down 
 South for a consideration, and then thanked God, and sang 
 the long metre Doxology through their noses, that they 
 
 1 George Livermore s Historical Research, p. 4, Boston, 1863. 
 
 -The language, " any other community in this land," might seem to limit the 
 comparison, for the alleged responsibility, to the British colonies; but when, 
 immediately following, Massachusetts is called "the nursing mother of the 
 horrors of the middle passage," it is clear that no limitation was intended. 
 2 
 
 2O1 
 
were not responsible any longer for the sin of human 
 slavery, should at least be modest in applying epithets to 
 her neighbors." 
 
 "If I may be permitted," he continues, "to disturb the 
 dignified solemnities of this body for one moment, I will 
 state what this reminds me of. I once heard of an old 
 maid who got religion at a camp-meeting. Immediately 
 after she had experienced the change she commenced 
 exhorting the younger and prettier women in regard to 
 wearing jewelry and gewgaws, and warned them against 
 the pernicious consequences to piety of such vanities. 
 Oh ! girls, she said, I tell you, I used to wear ear-rings, 
 and finger rings, and laces and furbelows like you do, but 
 I found they were dragging my immortal soul down to 
 hell ; and I stripped them every one off and sold them to 
 my younger sister Sally. That is the way Massachusetts 
 relieved herself from slavery. That is the way she pre 
 served her whiteness of soul." 1 
 
 Part of this language awakens the echoes which once 
 resounded through the halls of Congress in the old slavery 
 days. Passing over the sarcasm and wit shown in the illus 
 trative anecdote, it will be more significant to enquire if the 
 allegations of fact upon which they rest are true. No 
 authorities are cited tending to substantiate them. Ordina 
 rily it is difficult, often it is impossible to prove a negative. 2 
 But in this case it is easy to prove the falsity of the charges 
 alleged, and to show where the responsibility of introducing 
 
 iCong. Rec., March 26, 1884, p. 2284. 
 
 2 At the time this speech was made, and the passage above cited appeared in 
 the newspapers, my friend and neighbor, the Hon. John C. Dodge, LL.D., 
 urged me to write a reply to it, which for several reasons I declined, and com 
 mended the subject to him, offering him any materials I might have for his use. 
 He consented, and made considerable progress in the work, but impaired eye 
 sight warned him to desist from making further extra demands upon it, and he 
 laid his manuscript aside before finishing it at least according to his original 
 intention. Mr. Dodge now kindly placed this paper in my hands with liberty 
 to make such use of it as I might find convenient. I found it to be admirably 
 prepared, and seeming fully to answer the purpose for which it was designed by 
 
slavery into this continent actually rests. The Senator 
 might easily have informed himself that the work of trans 
 porting negroes from Africa to the mainland and islands 
 of this continent was almost exclusively done by English 
 men and in English ships. Mr. Bancroft writing in 1840 
 summarizes the matter thus, "While the South Sea 
 Company satisfied but imperfectly its passion for wealth, by 
 a monopoly of the supply of negroes for the Spanish islands 
 and main, the African Company and independent traders 
 were still more busy in sending negroes to the colonies of 
 England. To this eagerness, encouraged by English legis 
 lation, fostered by royal favor, and enforced for a century 
 by every successive ministry of England, it is due, that 
 one-sixth part of the population of the United States a 
 moiety of those who dwell in the five States nearest the 
 Gulf of Mexico are descendants of Africans." 1 
 
 I have cited this extract from Mr. Bancroft s History 
 because the work is so easily accessible, the volume con 
 taining it having been published nearly fifty years ago. 
 Let us look at some of the facts on which this statement 
 rests. And I invite this inspection not merely by way of 
 answering the charges alleged, which would require but 
 little time and but a small space in this paper, but to bring 
 before us some of the facts and statistics relating to the 
 British slave-trade, in a narrative form, as more suitable 
 to an occasion like this. 
 
 "The history of English America," says Mr. Payne in 
 hib Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen, "begins with the 
 three slave-trading voyages of John Hawkins, made in the 
 years 1562, 1564, and 1567. 2 Nothing that Englishmen 
 
 him. I will add that I have here made free use of such of its notes and 
 references as suited my purpose, thereby saving to myself considerable time 
 and labor. 
 
 1 Bancroft s History of U. S., Vol. III., p. 402. 
 
 2 It is not improbable that old William Hawkins, the father of John, had 
 already made the Brazilian voyage in 1530 and 1532, by way of Guinea, though 
 Hakluyt is silent as to slaves. 
 
had done in connection with America, previously to those 
 voyages had any results worth recording." Nearly seventy 
 years before, John Cabot, sailing for England, had reached 
 the New World, and some English adventurers as the 
 tidings of discovery spread had crossed the Atlantic to the 
 American coast. "But as years passed the English voy 
 ages to America had become fewer and fewer, and at length 
 ceased altogether." As the Spanish and Portuguese planta 
 tions in America multiplied the demand for negroes also 
 increased. The Spaniards had no African settlements, but 
 the Portuguese, who were the pioneers in the negro slave- 
 trade on the coast of Africa, had many ; and with the aid of 
 the French were able to supply enough for both themselves 
 and their neighbor. But so rapid was the growth of the. 
 Brazilian plantations, about the middle of the sixteenth cen 
 tury, that they absorbed the entire supply and the Spanish 
 colonists knew not where to look for negroes. This penury 
 of slaves in the Spanish Indies became known to the Eng 
 lish and French captains who frequented the Guinea coast ; 
 and John Hawkins who had been engaged from boyhood in 
 the trade with Spain and the Canaries, resolved in 1562 to 
 take a cargo of negro slaves to Hispaniola." 1 The old 
 chronicler, Hakluyt, has preserved an account of these 
 three expeditions, of the kidnapping of the negroes on the 
 coast of Africa, and their transportation to the West Indies, 
 written by eye-witnesses. The first voyage, which was 
 successful, opened the seas of the West Indies to the Eng 
 lish navigator. Hawkins sold his negroes in Hispaniola, 
 delivering them at the northern ports on the island. The 
 second voyage was likewise successful, for Hawkins entered 
 the Caribbean Sea, visited the Spanish main, where he sold 
 his living freight, and returned by the way of Florida 
 where he visited the French colony of Laudonniere and 
 the coast of North America, following very nearly the 
 
 1 Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America, by E.J.Payne: London, 
 1880, pp. 1-6. 
 
track of Verrazzano forty years before. This voyage won 
 for him wealth and distinction, and in 1565 he obtained 
 from the Queen his well-known coat of arms, having the 
 crest of "a demi-rnoor bound and captive." The vessel in 
 which he sailed on this voyage, the one he personally com 
 manded, was the " Jesus." His third voyage was disas 
 trous in the extreme, as in an encounter with a Spanish 
 fleet at the port of San Juan de Ullua, in which he had 
 taken refuge in a storm, he barely escaped to tell the tale. 
 In his distress he was obliged to put on shore, on the Mexi 
 can coast, one hundred men, being one-half of his number, 
 to struggle for themselves, and the subsequent history of 
 those who survived forms an interesting episode in the early 
 annals of America. 
 
 It should perhaps be explained here why Hawkins was 
 obliged to visit the Spanish ports in America by stealth 
 to sell his negroes, when this species of merchandise was 
 so much wanted. The Spanish colonists were eager to buy 
 and to them Hawkins sold in spite of the remonstrance 
 and opposition of the Spanish colonial officials, who had 
 been instructed by the government at home to admit no 
 English ships into their ports. For political reasons 
 especially, great jealousy of the English existed in Spain, 
 and after Hawkins s first and second voyages, express orders 
 were issued against him. Hawkins was, therefore, an 
 interloper on the coast. This was Hawkins s last slave- 
 voyage, and he is the only Englishman who, during the 
 sixteenth century, mixed himself up with the slave-trade. 1 
 
 I might add that previous to Hawkins s slave ventures 
 English merchantmen often visited the coast of Africa. 
 
 o 
 
 We find them there in 1551, and in the following years 
 down to 1556, but no slaves are mentioned as objects of 
 traffic. 2 
 
 i"Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa as connected with 
 Europe and America," &c., by James Bandinel, Esq., Foreign Office, London, 
 1842, p. 39. 
 
 2 Bandiuel, 33, 36. " It is said, that, in the year 1553, four and twenty negroes 
 
8 
 
 England now began to realize the importance of enlarg 
 ing her commerce as a vent for her manufacturing products, 
 and several commercial companies were chartered by royal 
 favor in aid of their schemes for trading to different parts 
 of the African coast. A few voyages were made, but 
 negroes are not mentioned as objects of traffic. 1 
 
 In 1618 a royal grant was made to the Governor and 
 Company of Adventurers trading to Africa, which is the 
 first instance in which the English seriously interfered with 
 the exclusive sovereignty claimed by Portugal on that 
 coast. They erected forts and established factories on the 
 Gambia, but the profits not answering their expectations 
 the company disbanded and the charter was suffered to 
 expire. But that company did not meddle with the trade 
 in slaves. 2 
 
 In 1631 a second African company was chartered for 
 
 were brought into this island from the coast of Africa, and immediately to an 
 English port, as at that time we had no American or sugar trade." Barring- 
 ton s Statutes, 281, quoting Hakluyt. 
 
 iBandinel, 39; Astley s Voyages, II., 158, 159. 
 
 2Baudinel,42,43; Edwards s, West Indies, II., 52, London, 1819. There prob 
 ably were at this early period roaming vessels of the English as of other nations 
 ready to pick up negroes on the coast of Africa or elsewhere nearer at home. 
 
 In August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war arrived in Virginia, and sold to the 
 planters there twenty negroes, the first brought into the colony. This Dutch 
 vessel was not a slaver from the coast of Africa. She had accidentally con- 
 s.orted, in the West Indies, with an English ship, the Treasurer, Captain 
 Elfred, owned by the Earl of Warwick and Governor Argall, and was sent out 
 by the former with an old commission from the Duke of Savoy, authorizing 
 her to take Spaniards as lawful prize. Manned and newly victualled from 
 Virginia she set out on her roving voyage. " These twenty negroes were part 
 of one hundred," says one authority, * captured from a Spanish vessel by the 
 Treasurer." (4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., IX., 4-7, and note p. 4). The remain- 
 der were taken to Bermuda and placed 011 the Earl of Warwick s plantation. 
 (Burk s Virginia, I., 319; Niell s Virginia Company, pp. 120, 121.) 
 
 Captain Arthur Guy, in 1628, in the ship Fortune of London, met and cap 
 tured a slaver from the Angola coast , and brought many negroes to Virginia 
 and exchanged them for tobacco. Niell s Virginia Carolorum, p. 59. 
 
 Dutch vessels are early found on the coast of Africa engaged in the slave 
 business, and later they became one of the most active maritime powers to 
 enlist in this traffic. In 1625 or 1626, the Dutch brought the first negroes to 
 Manhattan. See Journals of the voyages of two Dutch slavers, the St. John 
 and Arms of Amsterdam, 1659, 1663, which, with illustrative papers, were 
 published in 1867, edited by E. B. O Callaghan. 
 
thirty-one years, and all persons except the patentees pro 
 hibited from trading to Guinea, between Cape Blanco and 
 the Cape of Good Hope. As the English had now begun 
 the settlement of plantations in the West Indies, negroes 
 were in such demand as to induce the new company at 
 great expense to erect forts and warehouses on the coast 
 for the protection of their commerce. This marks the time 
 when the English began to embark in the importing of 
 slaves from Africa the first since the days of Hawkins; 
 but it does not appear that they had as yet entered upon 
 what was called the "carrying trade" for others. The 
 English, French, Dutch and Portuguese each supplied 
 their own colonies with slaves. The Spaniards, as I have 
 said, had no resources on the coast of Africa and were 
 obliged to resort to other nations to supply their colonists. 
 But the trade of this company was so interfered with by 
 interlopers and private traders, united to the intense 
 hostility of the Dutch, who had now acquired additional 
 possessions in Guinea from the Portuguese, that the trade 
 was laid open and so continued till after the Restoration. 
 In 1641 the English Barbadoes procured sugar-cane from 
 Brazil, and after the fashion of the Portuguese black slaves 
 were resorted to for its cultivation. 1 
 
 In 1655, Cromwell, in failing to take St. Domingo, took 
 Jamaica, and commenced peopling it with emigrants from 
 England, Scotland and Ireland; and he had it "much at 
 heart" to transport the Massachusetts colony thither. It 
 does not appear that he contemplated the aid of negroes in 
 cultivation. No sugar was yet produced here. But Jamaica 
 was destined to play an important part in the history of the 
 English slave-trade. 
 
 In the year 1662, Charles II. incorporated a third exclu 
 sive African company, of which his brother, the Duke of 
 York, and other distinguished persons, were members. 
 That company undertook to supply the British West India 
 
 iBandinel, 44, 47. 48; Edwards, II., 52, 53. 
 
10 
 
 colonies with three thousand negroes annually. In 1664, 
 the King, intending to make war on the Dutch, sent Sir 
 Robert Holmes to the coast of Africa with orders to reduce 
 the Dutch forts near Cape Verde, and their factories on the 
 Guinea coast. In this war New York was taken by the 
 English. These several African companies, however, 
 though protected by patents and exclusive privileges, do not 
 appear to have flourished, and from time to time they 
 returned into the hands of the Crown the favors granted to 
 them. 
 
 In 1672 the third company having surrendered their 
 charter to the Crown the fourth and last exclusive African 
 company was established. It was an incorporated company 
 upon a joint stock, as the last company had been. It bore 
 the dignified name of the "Royal African Company," and 
 it had among its members the King, the Duke of York, and 
 many others of rank and quality. The capital was 111 ,000 
 sterling. The grant was from Port Sallee in South Barbary, 
 to the Cape of Good Hope. They allowed the late com 
 pany 34,000 for their three forts at Cape Coast Castle, 
 Sierra Leone, and James Fort, and they exhibited great 
 energy in prosecuting their business. They enlarged Cape 
 Coast Castle, built forts at Accra, and five other places, 
 and imported large quantities of dyestuffs, of ivory, wax 
 and gold, and supplied the British colonists with slaves. 
 From the gold dust which they procured was struck the 
 English coin known as the "guinea" from the name of 
 the country 50,000 at one time, in 1673, and called 
 "elephant guineas" from the stamp they bore. But by the 
 Declaration of Right at the Revolution of 1688 all royal 
 charters were attacked and the exclusive character of this 
 company was taken away, though they still persisted in 
 seizing the ships of the separate traders, which occasioned 
 great clamor and obstruction. In 1689 the company 
 entered into a contract to supply the Spanish West Indies 
 with slaves from Jamaica, and in 1697-8 the trade to 
 
11 
 
 Africa which by the Declaration of Right was claimed to be 
 laid open was expressly made so by Parliament under cer 
 tain conditions. By statutes of 9 and 10, W. and M., c. 
 26, it was enacted "that for the preservation of the trade, 
 and for the advantage of England and its colonies, it should 
 be lawful for any of the subjects of his Majesty s realm of 
 England, as well as for the company, to trade from England 
 and the plantations in America to Africa, between Cape 
 Mount and Cape of Good Hope, upon paying for the afore 
 said uses a duty of 10 p. cent, ad valorem for the goods 
 exported from England or the plantations, to be paid to the 
 collector at the time of entry outwards, for the use of the 
 company." 1 Also a further 10 per cent, was to be paid on 
 all goods imported into England or the plantations from the 
 coast aforesaid. This act was limited to thirteen years, 
 and Astley says it was renewed in 1712. 2 On the 18th of 
 April, 1707, a circular letter from the Board of Trade was 
 addressed to all the British American colonies, asking for 
 information as to whether the act just cited has accomplished 
 its purpose in affording the best means for "the well supply 
 ing of the plantations and colonies with sufficient number of 
 negroes at reasonable prices," which is "the chief point to 
 be considered in regard to that trade," it being "absolutely 
 necessary that a trade so beneficial to the kingdom should 
 be carried on to the greatest advantage." 3 The struggle 
 now was between the African Company, with its abridged 
 monopoly, and the private traders, "the subjects of his 
 Majesty s Realm of England," as to which offered the best 
 method for supplying the colonies with negroes in sufficient 
 numbers and at the most reasonable prices. 
 
 It appears that there had been annually imported into 
 the British colonies between 167 ( J and 1689 a period of 
 ten years by the African Company, and by interloping 
 
 1 Edwards s West Indies, Vol. II., pp. 54-56; Statutes of the Realm, Vol. 
 VII. ; Bandinel, pp. 52, 53, 54. 
 
 2 Astley s Voyages, Vol. II., pp. 160, 161. 
 *E. I. Col. Sec., Vol. IV., p. 53. 
 
12 
 
 traders, about 4,500 slaves, and in the last named year, as 
 we have already seen, the company entered into a contract 
 with the Spanish government to supply her colonies with 
 slaves from Jamaica, which island was to be the entrepot; 
 andut likewise appears that from 1698 to 1707 there were 
 landed in the British colonies, partly by the company and 
 partly by British traders, about 25,000 negroes a year. 1 
 The direct supply of slaves from Africa to the Spanish 
 colonies was, however, at this time, engrossed by the 
 French, and it was not till 1713 that the English took part 
 in the carrying trade. 2 
 
 We have now arrived at a new era in the history of the 
 British slave-trade. In the year 1713, the French contract 
 with Spain having expired, the Spanish government made 
 over to an English company by formal royal contract the 
 privilege of supplying the Spanish-American colonies with 
 slaves from Africa. The Spanish term for contract, "Ass-i- 
 ento" was now specially applied to this agreement. The 
 contract was called k The Assiento" and the company the 
 " Assientists." The contract was held of such importance 
 as to form the subject of a stipulation in the preliminaries 
 of the treaty of peace of Utrecht, and it was confirmed in 
 the sixteenth article of that treaty. It was to last for thirty 
 years. 3 The treaty was really between Philip V. of Spain 
 and Anne, Queen of England ; and this is the language of 
 the agreement: Her Britannic Majesty did offer and 
 undertake, by persons whom she shall appoint, to bring 
 into the West Indies of America belonging to his Catholic 
 Majesty, in the space of thirty years 144,000 negroes, at the 
 rate of 4,800 in each of the said thirty years ;" 4 advancing 
 him 200,000 crowns for the privilege and paying a duty of 
 thirty-three and one-half crowns for each slave. And they 
 might import as many more as they could sell the first 
 
 1 Report of Priv. Council on trade with Africa, Bandinel, p. 56. 
 
 2 Bandinel, p. 50. 
 
 3 Bandinel, pp. 57-61. 
 
 4 Bancroft, Vol. III., p. 232. 
 
13 
 
 twenty-five years at a reduced scale of duty. 1 "Exactest 
 care was taken," says Mr. Bancroft, "to secure a monopoly. 
 No Frenchman, nor Spaniard, nor any other person might 
 introduce one negro slave into Spanish-America. For the 
 Spanish world in the Gulf of Mexico, on the Atlantic, and 
 along the Pacific, as well as for the English colonies, her 
 Britannic Majesty by persons of her appointment, was the 
 exclusive slave trader. England extorted the privilege of 
 filling the new world with negroes." 2 As large profits 
 were expected, the King of Spain took one-quarter of the 
 stock and gave his note for it, and the Queen reserved to 
 herself one-quarter, while the remaining one-half was left 
 for her subjects. Thus, continues Mr. Bancroft, the Sover 
 eigns of England and Spain became the largest slave 
 merchants in the world. By advice of her minister Queen 
 Anne assigned her portion of the stock to the South Sea 
 Company which contracted for this carrying trade. 
 
 It is calculated that for twenty ye&rs after this contract 
 the number of slaves annually exported from Africa by the 
 English was 15,000, of whom a third to a half went to the 
 Spanish colonies ; and that for the following twenty years 
 the number was 20, 000. 3 
 
 The slave-trade part of the assiento had all along been a 
 losing business, the only thing which sustained the com 
 pany being the privilege reserved of sending annually a 
 ship to Puerto Bello with merchandise a clause in the 
 contract which opened a wide field for fraudulent profit, as 
 well as for complaint, resulting finally in loss, and was one 
 occasion of the war which in 1 739 broke out between Eng 
 land and Spain. 
 
 In 1739, twenty-five years from the date of the assiento 
 agreement, the English company had got in debt to Spain 
 
 1 Baodinel, pp. 57, 58; Journal House of Commons, Vol. XVIL, p. 341, Art. 
 XII., p. 342; Mem. of Lord Bolingbroke, by G. W. Cooke, second ed., Vol. I., 
 p. 233, London, 1836. 
 
 2 Bancroft, III., 232. 
 
 3 Bandinel, p. 59. 
 
14 
 
 to the amount of 68,000, and the King of Spain threatened 
 to suspend the contract if the sum was not paid. The war 
 between the two countries interrupted the contract which 
 soon after came to an end. 
 
 The English African company, in the mean time, had 
 been entirely ruined by the assiento speculation, and in 
 1729 were obliged to come before Parliament for assistance 
 to keep up their forts and factories. We have already 
 seen that the trade had been conditionally opened by gov 
 ernment to English traders to her own colonies, so that the 
 company s monopoly had been infringed upon. Parliament 
 granted them from 1729 to 1749 80,000, so important 
 was it to keep alive one of the important agencies for trans 
 porting slaves from Africa. 1 But in 1750 the company was 
 dissolved, their charter, forts and all their property sur 
 rendered to government who paid their debts, and the 
 African trade was placed under a new company so that the 
 business should be open to all his Majesty s subjects. 2 
 Although the African company now ceased to export 
 negroes from Africa it must not be supposed that the num 
 ber of slaves exported in English vessels had diminished. 
 The carrying trade had become open to the English gener 
 ally, and though other nations, the Dutch, the French, and 
 lastly the Spaniard now by degrees entered into the busi 
 ness, still, | from 1750 down to the time of the American 
 Revolution, the English were by far the greatest exporters 
 of slaves from Africa, and the number was constantly 
 increasing. 3 
 
 !Bandmel,p. 60. 
 
 2 The preamble to the act of 1750 recites : " Whereas the trade to Africa is 
 very advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary for the supplying the planta 
 tions and colonies thereunto belonging with a sufficient number of negroes at 
 reasonable rates, and for that purpose the said trade ought to be free to all his 
 Majesty s subjects," etc. (Statutes at large.) 
 
 3 The following chronological summary may be interesting: In 1708 a com 
 mittee of the House of Commons reported that the trade is important and 
 ought to be free"; in 1711 a committee once more report that "the plantations 
 ought to be supplied with negroes at reasonable rates," and recommend an 
 
15 
 
 Edwards says that from 1733 to 1766 the average annual 
 exportation of slaves from Africa by England might be 
 estimated at 20,000, but that immediately before the troubles 
 with America the number had increased to 41,000. And 
 Macpherson in his History of Commerce, states that the 
 number shipped in 1768 by all nations for America and 
 the West Indies was estimated at 97,000, that of these the 
 British shipping took 60,000.* 
 
 Edwards 2 estimates that between 1680 and 1700, twenty 
 years, the African company and the private traders exported 
 from Africa 300,000, which is 15,000 a year. From 1700 
 to 1786 to Jamaica alone 610,000, or about 7,000 annually. 
 Of the number in the same interval, imported into the 
 southern provinces of North America as well as the Wind 
 ward Islands such precision cannot be employed, but 
 Edwards is of opinion that Jamaica may be one-third of 
 the whole, and that the total import into all the British 
 colonies of America and the West Indies from 1680 to 
 1786, or one hundred and six years, may be put at 
 2,130,000, an annual average of 20,095. 
 
 I have a list of slave ships which sailed from England 
 from 1771 to 1787, eighteen years. In 1771, 192 ships 
 sailed from Liverpool, London and Bristol, provided for 
 47,000 slaves 107 ships from Liverpool alone provided 
 for 29,250 slaves. In 1772, 175 vessels were employed; 
 
 increase of the trade; in June, 1712, Queen Anne, in her speech to Parliament, 
 boasts of her success in securing to Englishmen a new market for slaves in 
 Spanish America; in 1720 George II. recommended a provision at the national 
 expense for the African forts, and the recommendation was allowed; at last, in 
 1749, to give the highest activity, to the trade, every obstruction to private 
 enterorise was removed and the ports of Africa were laid open to English com 
 petition, for " the slave trade," in the words of the statute, " is very advanta 
 geous to Great Britain." " The British Senate," writes Horace Wai pole to Sir 
 II. Mann, February 2"), 17">0, "have this fortnight been pondering methods to 
 make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes; it has appeared to us 
 that six and forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year to our planta 
 tions alone." (Bancroft, III., 414.) Bandinel, pp. 61, 63. 
 
 iBandincl, p. 03. 
 
 2 Vol. IT., p. <U. ed. of 1819. 
 
10 
 
 1773, 151; 1774, 167: 1775, 152; 177(5, 101. In the 
 three following years owing to the American Revolution 
 there was a brief suspension of the trade, but at its close it 
 was renewed. 
 
 And here I may mention, incidentally, that so large was 
 the death-rate among slaves in the West Indies and so 
 small the natural increase, that in 1840, the whole negro 
 population in the English islands, including mixed breeds, 
 did not exceed 7(53,000. Burke, in his account of the 
 European settlements in America, in 1755, states, that at 
 that period the number of negro slaves in the British 
 possessions in the West Indies was about 240,000, and 
 that of the white population 90,000; and that in Virginia 
 there were about 100,000 negro slaves, with a white popula 
 tion of between 60,000 and 70,000 ; and that the English 
 imported annually at least one-sixteenth part of the existing 
 negroes to keep up the stock, making an importation of 
 about 15,000 annually for the British West Indies, and of 
 6,200 for Virginia. 2 
 
 But it appears that the result was different in the 
 original colonies of the United States from that in the West 
 Indies. With an estimated importation of, say, 350,000, 
 from 1619 to 1808, these had increased in 1830 to 
 2,328, 642 3 or in I860 to near 4,000,000. 4 
 
 "We shall not err very much," says Mr. Bancroft, " if, 
 for the century previous to the prohibition of the slave- 
 trade by the American Congress, in 1776, we assume the 
 number imported by the English into the Spanish, French, 
 and English West Indies, as well as the English continental 
 colonies, to have been, collectively nearly three millions, 
 to which are to be added more than a quarter of a million 
 
 1 Ed wards, II., 65, 6G. 
 
 2 Band! lie), 64,65. 
 
 *T. G. Bradford and S. G. Goodrich, Atlas, 166, 167. 
 
 4 About 30,000 were found in Louisiana at the time of her incorporation into 
 the Union. H. C. Carey, " Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign," Philadel 
 phia, 1856, pp. 13, 17. 
 
17 
 
 thrown into the Atlantic on the passage." And these statis 
 tics, I may add, are the lowest ever made by any writer. 
 " English ships fitted out in English cities," continues Mr. 
 Bancroft, "under the special favor of the royal family, of 
 the ministry, and of parliament, stole from Africa, in the 
 years from 1700 to 1750, probably a million and a half of 
 souls, of whom one-eighth were buried in the Atlantic, 
 victims of the passage." 1 
 
 Here we see who is principally responsible, since the 
 beginning of their settlement, for introducing slaves from 
 Africa into the British-American colonies. It is the story 
 briefly told of the British slave-trade ; of the transference, 
 not of the seeds of a race merely, but of a people, from one 
 continent to another. It was generally regarded at the 
 time as a respectable business. For many years the public 
 conscience uttered no reproaches, but finally it was aroused. 
 
 But, it may be asked, did not Massachusetts, or some of 
 the citizens of Massachusetts, engage in the African slave- 
 trade? Undoubtedly they did, to a certain extent, and I 
 have no wish to screen Massachusetts from her responsibility 
 in this business. Her citizens shared, more or less, in the 
 opinions of the time, on the moral, social and economical 
 problems which underlay society, and were subject to the 
 debasing influences which sometimes attended commercial 
 and mercantile enterprises ; but there was always a protest 
 from the heart of the people against this crime to humanity, 
 from the time of Joseph Sewall in 1700 to Nathaniel Apple- 
 ton in 1769, which ere long made itself felt as a controlling 
 influence in the community. 
 
 The Massachusetts colonists became early a commercial 
 people. They built ships and freighted them with their 
 own productions, and traded to the West Indies, the Span 
 ish main and to Europe, quite regardless of the English 
 Act of Navigation after the passage of that act in 1651. 
 And as it is well known that there were a few negro slaves 
 
 i Bancroft, III., 411, 412. 
 
18 
 
 in the colony during the first charter, it is clear that some of 
 them were part of the return cargoes from the West Indies. 
 Some of their vessels went as far as the coast of Africa, 
 and Winthrop notices one which went to the Canaries in 
 1644 with pipe-staves, and brought home an assorted cargo 
 which she took in at Barbadoes "in exchange for Africoes 
 which she carried from the Isle of Maio," one of the Cape 
 Verde Islands. 
 
 The first negroes brought into the colony, so far as we 
 know, came in the ship Desire, Captain Peirce, Febru 
 ary 26, 1637-38, who brought home some cotton and 
 tobacco and negroes from the West Indies. These were 
 the return cargo of the vessel, which, seven months before, 
 had taken some Pequot captives to the Bermudas for sale. 
 The three negroes seen by Josselyn at Samuel Maverick s 
 house on Noddle s Island in October of the following year, 
 no doubt came from that importation. We do not know 
 whether these were all. 1 
 
 In 1645 it came to the knowledge of the Massachusetts 
 authorities that some slaves had been brought into the 
 
 O 
 
 colony from Guinea that had been kidnapped or stolen from 
 that coast, one of whom was in possession of a Mr. 
 Williams of Piscataqua. The owner was required to pro 
 duce the negro, and an order was passed November 4, 
 1646, directing that the captives be returned to their native 
 land of Guinea, "the General Court conceiving themselves 
 bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the 
 heinous and crying sin of man-stealing," and the Governor 
 was desired to put the order into execution. 2 
 
 In whatever light we may regard this transaction, it is 
 evident from this, that the negro, in 1645, was regarded in 
 Massachusetts as a man; and by a clause in the Body of 
 Liberties of 1641, " Man-stealing" was punished with death. 
 
 i Winthrop s Journal, Vol. I., p. 255; Josselyn s Voyages, London, 1674. p. 
 3. 
 2 Mass. Coll. Rec., Vol. II., p. 108. 
 
19 
 
 In this case it was doubted whether the authority of the 
 government extended so far as to punish a citizen for acts 
 committed on the coast of Africa. 
 
 Edward Randolph in 1676, and Governor Bradstreet in 
 1680, report a few slaves brought here from Guinea and 
 Madagascar, and from the West Indies, but do not mention 
 who brought them. The latter says that "no company of 
 slaves have been brought since the establishment of the 
 colony fifty years ago, except about two years ago, after 
 twenty months voyage to Madagascar, a vessel brought 
 forty or fifty negroes." 1 
 
 Sir Josiah Childe in his New Discourse of Trade," first 
 published in 1668 (a remarkable book for its day), has an 
 interesting passage on the commerce of New England, 
 and where he speaks of New England he probably means 
 Massachusetts in which he enumerates her articles of 
 export and import, describes the whole course and extent 
 of her trade, but says not a word of negroes, except to 
 draw a comparison between New England and Barbadoes, 
 where slaves were employed as laborers. And Edward 
 Randolph, referred to above, in a long and interesting 
 report to the Privy Council in 1676, on the resources of the 
 country, her agriculture, her manufactures, the character 
 and extent of her commerce with her sister colonies and 
 with foreign nations, says, near the close of this section of 
 his paper: "There are some ships lately sent j:o Guinea, 
 Madagascar and those coasts, and some to Scanderoon, 
 ladep with masts and yards for ships." 3 
 ^Governor Dudley, in 1708, in replying to the circular 
 letter from the Board of Trade, to which I have already 
 referred, says that from January 24, 1698, to December 
 25, 1707, 200 negroes arrived in Massachusetts that the 
 African company had not any factory or ships here. 
 
 13 Mass. Hist. Soe. Coll., VIII., 337. 
 
 2 See pp. 212-214 of edition of 1693. 
 
 3 Hutchinson Papers, p. 495. 
 
 3 
 
20 
 
 "Some traders on their own account, a long time since, 
 have been on the coast of Guinea and imported slaves. 
 The last was Thomas Winsor, who brought slaves from 
 Africa in 1699, and also twenty-five of them in 1700. 51 
 The duties belonging to the African company are enclosed 
 by the writer. "Such money," says Mr. Felt, "appears 
 to have been what the company claimed by their charter, 
 which allowed them the monopoly of the slave-trade with 
 the English dominions." 
 
 More slaves were brought into the colony as the new 
 century opened. Some of them probably coming from the 
 West Indies, and some of them direct from the coast of 
 Africa ; and to whatever extent the African slave-trade was 
 prosecuted from Massachusetts, it seems to have been, 
 prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, confined to 
 a comparatively few vessels. Statistics unhappily are 
 wanting, and we must reason from general facts and con 
 temporary opinions. We have already seen that the Afri 
 can companies had, by their charters, a complete monopoly 
 of the trade from 1631 to 1698 except during small 
 intervals of time, and from the last named date to 1750, 
 the trade was so fur opened that "any of the subjects 
 of his Majesty s Realm of England" could participate in it 
 by implication no others. There can be little doubt that 
 interloping vessels from Massachusetts sometimes visited 
 the coast before the trade was freely opened in 1750. The 
 companies struggled hard from the beginning to maintain 
 their monopoly. I have a long and interesting letter a 
 printed broadside dated November 15, 1690, addressed 
 to a member of Parliament, protesting against the opening 
 of the trade, and claiming that the business required so 
 much capital to carry it on that it could be conducted to 
 advantage only by an incorporated company and a joint 
 stock. In the year 1750 the trade was thrown open, and 
 Massachusetts and other colonies took part in it. 
 
 merican Statistical Association, Vol. I., p. 586. 
 
21 
 
 One of the best authorities on the subject of slavery in 
 Massachusetts was Dr. Jeremy Belknap of Boston, an emi 
 nent historical scholar, and the founder of the Massachu 
 setts Historical Society. He was born in Boston in 1744. 
 In order to correctly answer several queries from Judge 
 Tucker of Virginia relating to slavery in Massachusetts, 
 Dr. Belknap, in 1795, addressed some forty letters of 
 enquiry to eminent and venerable citizens of the State ; and 
 from the letters he received in reply and from personal 
 conferences with others, united to his own knowledge, he 
 drew up an answer to Judge Tucker, which was published 
 three years later in the fourth volume of the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society Collections. 1 Concerning the slave-trade 
 he says : 
 
 !The letters received by Dr. Belknap, of this correspondence, or so many of 
 them as are preserved, were printed by me nine years ago in 5 Massachusetts 
 Historical Society Collections, III., 379-403. Of the writers of these, only 
 seven in number, five have given their opinions on the subject in hand. 
 
 Dr. John Eliot, born in 1754, writes, " The African trade was carried on; 
 and commenced at an early period; to a small extent compared with Rhode 
 Island, but it made a considerable branch of our commerce (to judge from the 
 number of our still-houses, and masters of vessels now living who have been in 
 the trade). It declined very little till the revolution. Some excellent writings 
 were diffused previously to this, and the sentiment of the people was against it; 
 but the merchants who had been engaged in the business still continued sending 
 their vessels for slaves, till the trade was prohibited by act of the court, 1788." 
 
 Samuel Dexter of Weston, the father of Samuel Dexter, the statesman, born 
 1726, writes, " If any such trade really existed at an early period, I may have 
 read something about it, but can now recollect nothing. It certainly never 
 was, at any time, carried on to a great extent in Massachusetts. Adventurers 
 from here have been concerned in a trade from Africa to the West Indies ; but 
 I know of none since Thomas Boylston, now in London, quitted it. McCarthy, 
 and, I believe, Job Prince, were his captains; the former, divers voyages. 
 Vessels from Rhode Island have brought slaves into Boston. Whether any 
 have been imported in that town by its own merchants, I am unable to say. I 
 have, more than fifty years ago, seen a vessel or two with slaves brought into 
 Boston, but do not recollect where they were owned. At that time [1745] it 
 was a very rare thing to hear the trade reprobated." 
 
 Thomas Pemberton, born 1728, writes, " We know that a large trade to 
 Guinea was carried on for many years by the citizens of the Massachusetts 
 colony, who were the proprietors of the vessels and their cargoes, out and 
 home. Some of the slaves purchased in Guinea, and I suppose the greatest 
 part of them, were sold in the West Indies, some were brought to Boston and 
 Charlestown, and sold to town and country purchasers by the head. . . . This 
 business of importing and selling negroes continued till nearly the time of the 
 
22 
 
 4 The African trade was never prosecuted to a great 
 extent by the merchants of Massachusetts. No records or 
 memorials are remaining by which anything respecting it, 
 in the last century, can be known. . . . By the inquiries 
 which I have made of our oldest merchants now living, I 
 cannot find that more than three ships in a year, belonging 
 to this port, were ever employed in the African trade. The 
 rum distilled here was the main-spring of this traffic. The 
 slaves, purchased in Africa, were chiefly sold in the West 
 Indies, or in the southern colonies ; but when those markets 
 were glutted, and the price low, some of them were brought 
 hither. Very few whole cargoes ever came to this port. 
 One gentleman says he remembers two or three. 1 remem 
 ber one, between thirty and forty years ago, which con 
 sisted almost wholly of children. At Rhode Island the 
 rum distillery and the African trade were prosecuted to a 
 greater extent than in Boston ; and I believe no other sea 
 port in Massachusetts had any concern in the slave business. 
 Sometimes the Rhode Island vessels, after having sold their 
 prime slaves in the West Indies, brought the remnants of 
 their cargoes hither for sale. Since this commerce has 
 declined the town of Newport has gone to decay. ... A 
 few only of our merchants were engaged in this kind of 
 traffic. It required a large capital and was considered as 
 peculiarly hazardous, though gainful. It was never sup 
 ported by popular opinion ; and the voice of conscience was 
 
 controversy with Great Britain. The precise date when it wholly ceased I 
 cannot ascertain, but it declined and drew to a period about the time the British 
 Parliament attempted to enslave the colonists by arbitrary acts." 
 
 Judge James Winthrop, born, say in 1751, writes," I have no certain infor 
 mation, but believe it was never carried on to any considerable extent but by 
 way of Rhode Island." 
 
 Dr. Holyoke, a physician of Salem, born 1728, to Judge Tucker s second 
 query, if the African slave trade was carried on thither?" writes, "Yes, 
 but never, I believe, to any great extent. When it commenced I know not, 
 nor when it began to decline. But few cargoes, I believe, have been brought 
 in here within this thirty-five or forty years. The older merchants in Boston 
 can best answer this question. The slaves which were brought here directly 
 from Africa came, for the most part, I believe, in American vessels. But the 
 trade was not generally agreeable to the people, and several openly expressed 
 their disapprobation of it. Judge Lowell about the latter end of the last 
 century published a small tract against it, entitled * Joseph Sold, Memorial. " 
 
 As has been said above, Dr. Belknap made extensive enquiries of our oldest 
 merchants as well as of others, whose letters are not preserved, and he has 
 given the results of bis investigation in the paper noticed above. 
 
23 
 
 against it. A degree of infamy was attached to the charac 
 ters of those who were employed in it; several of them, in 
 their last hours, bitterly lamented their concern in it." 
 
 The distilling of rum was one of the industries of Massa- 
 
 O 
 
 chusetts, and continued to be for many years. This article 
 was supplied to most of the other colonies ; the Indian 
 trade, the New England and Newfoundland fisheries as well 
 as the African trade consumed it. 
 
 Dr. Belknap supposed that Boston was the only sea-port 
 in Massachusetts from which slave-ships sailed. But Dr. 
 Felt has furnished memoranda of a few ships which sailed 
 from Salem, an important commercial port. He notices 
 one in 1763 which sails for Guinea ; one in 1773 which had 
 reached the West Indies with slaves from the river Gambia ; 
 two in 1785 ; and one in 1787 are found engaged in this 
 traffic; and in 1791 another arrived in Surinam from the 
 coast of Africa. Visiting the coast of Africa or being 
 employed in the African trade might not necessarily imply 
 that the vessel was a slaver. 1 
 
 That these vessels occasionally took their cargoes into 
 the ports of the southern colonies is probable, for I find in 
 the instructions given to the captains of two vessels before 
 sailing on their dismal voyages a clause directing them in 
 certain contingences to go to Charleston ; and Dr. Belknap 
 tells us that the slaves were chiefly sold in the West Indies 
 or in the southern colonies. About the time of the Stamp 
 Act Dr. Belknap says the trade began to decline, and in 
 1788 it was prohibited by law. This could not have been 
 done, he says, previous to the Revolution as the governors 
 sent hither were instructed not to consent to any acts made 
 for that purpose. 
 
 From this review of the evidence, allowing it to weigh 
 against Massachusetts all it will possibly bear, it is certain 
 that the share which that colony had in the planting of 
 slavery in the new world was but a drop in the bucket 
 
 i Annals of Salem, Vol. II., Salem, 1849. 
 
24 
 
 compared with that of England. Nor is this all. I have 
 no wish to draw any invidious comparisions between sister 
 colonies, but I am here compelled to say that Rhode Island 
 was engaged in the slave-trade to a far greater extent than 
 Massachusetts was. We have seen what Dr. Belknap says 
 on this point, and Dr. Samuel Hopkins of Newport, in 
 1776, in a tract advocating the abolition of slavery, 1 says, 
 " As Rhode Island has been more deeply interested in the 
 slave-trade, and has enslaved more of the poor Africans 
 than any other colony in New England, it has been to the 
 honor of that colony that she has made a law prohibiting 
 the importation of any more slaves." 2 
 
 If we take into account only the 350,000 slaves estimated 
 to have been brought into the southern colonies of the 
 United States during all the period we have been reviewing, 
 we can imagine how small a part of them could on any 
 probable hypothesis have been supplied by Massachusetts 
 vessels. 
 
 We come now to the charge that after slavery in Massa 
 chusetts was found not to pay the slaves were sold down 
 south. Here again no proof is offered, and no case is cited. 
 Probably the speaker had no case to cite. The charge is 
 indefinite as to time. When did the people of Massachu 
 setts find that slavery did not pay ? Slavery never at any 
 time was profitable here, and w r hite servants were preferred 
 when they could be obtained. I propose now to show what 
 slavery was in Massachusetts, and to see if on any grounds 
 of probability the charge above made could be true. 
 
 We have seen when negro slaves were first brought into 
 the colony in 1637-38. There was never any positive 
 law establishing the institution here. Negro slavery existed 
 then all over the civilized world by virtue of public law or 
 custom. It came into Virginia and into New York, that is, 
 Manhattan, before the Massachusetts colony was founded, 
 
 1 A Dialogue, concerning the Slavery of the Africans, etc., Norwich, 1776, p. 
 57. 
 2 The prohibitory law was not, however, passed till October, 1787. 
 
25 
 
 and into all the other colonies from time to time since, as 
 the tide comes in. Mr. Hurd in his book on "The Law 
 of Freedom and Bondage in the United States," L, 225, 
 says: 
 
 "The involuntary servitude of Indians and negroes in the 
 several colonies originated under a law not promulgated by 
 legislation, and rested upon prevalent views of universal 
 jurisprudence, or the law of nations, supported by the 
 express or implied authority of the home government." 
 
 But in the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, adopted in 
 1641 the first code of laws it is provided, that "there 
 shall never be any bond slavery, villanage or captivity 
 amongst us unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars 
 and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold 
 to us." And this law was substantially reenacted three 
 several times, the last time in 1672. l Its meaning has been 
 the subject of some controversy, but in view of the above 
 facts there can be little doubt that it was regarded by its 
 authors as a limitation of slavery, and not as an establish 
 ment of the right to hold slaves. By its terms there could 
 be but two classes of slaves, prisoners of war and persons 
 sold or purchased. The children of slaves were, therefore, 
 by law, free. I have never seen any contemporary adjudi 
 cation of this provision of law and by "contemporary" I 
 mean during the existence of slavery in Massachusetts but 
 later, in one of those pauper settlement cases which came 
 before the Supreme Court in 1796, the court decided that a 
 child born in Massachusetts of a slave mother was by the 
 law of Massachusetts free. 2 Still it must be admitted that 
 the common usage in Massachusetts for a long time was 
 to regard the children of slave mothers as slaves in fact. 3 
 Perhaps this was inevitable. The child needed a home and 
 required to be fed and clothed, and as it grew up and 
 
 13 Mass. Hist. Soc. Col., VIII., 231; and the several digests of laws. 
 
 2 Littleton v. Tuttle, 4 Mass. Rep., 123. 
 
 3 See Judge Parsous s statement in 1808, in 4 Mass., 128, note, referring to the 
 Littleton case in 1796. 
 
26 
 
 became one of the family of servants it came to be regarded 
 as having the same relation to the family as its mother had, 
 and the protection of its master was thrown round it to 
 preserve it from pauperism and crime. And whatever 
 significance may have been attached to this provision of 
 law at first, it seems in time to have been lost sight of. 
 
 r- "* . 
 
 I Governor Dudley reports in 1708 that there were 400 
 1 servants in Boston, one-half of whom were born here. 1 
 
 Slavery in Massachusetts was different from what it was 
 in the West Indies, or even in the Southern States. 2 It 
 was probably as mild in its character as could well be con 
 sidering the material which constituted it. Of course it 
 was a form of slavery the subjection of one man s will to 
 another man s will. The foundation of slavery, as old as 
 human nature itself, says Dr. Maine in his treatise on 
 Ancient Law, is "the simple wish to use the bodily powers 
 of another person as a means of ministering to one s own 
 ease or pleasure." What slavery actually was here can be 
 gathered, not so much perhaps by the laws which were 
 enacted to regulate it, as from the knowledge of those 
 who lived among it, and who knew the public sentiment 
 and the customs of society respecting it, and the relations 
 which grew out of them. The cases adjudicated in the 
 courts were rarely reported, but their influence in favor of 
 liberty though silent was sure. In simple and unmitigated 
 slavery, the slave has no rights. In Massachusetts negroes 
 were generally regarded as human beings, who had some 
 rights which white men were bound to respect. 
 
 The great lawyer and statesman, Nathan Dane, born in 
 1752, and living in the midst of slavery here thirty years, 
 and probably knowing many persons whose memory went 
 back to 170S, when there were but 550 slaves in the colony, 
 is an intelligent witness to the status of slavery in Massa 
 chusetts. 
 
 He says : "The negro or mulatto slave in New Eng- 
 
 iFelt, Stat. Asso., p. 586. 
 
 2 See St. George Tucker s Dissertation on Slavery, Philadelphia, 1796, passim. 
 
27 
 
 land always had many rights which raised him above the 
 absolute slave." The master had no right to his life, that 
 is, if he killed him he was punishable as for killing a free 
 man ; he was liable to his slave s action for beating, wound 
 ing, or immoderately chastising him, as much as for 
 immoderately correcting an apprentice, or a child ; the slave 
 was capable of holding property, as a devisee or a legatee, 
 as the damages recovered for personal injuries ; if any one 
 took the slave away from his master without his consent, 
 the master could not sue in trover, but only as for taking 
 away any other servant. On the whole the slave had the 
 right of property and of life as apprentices had, and the 
 only difference was, "an apprentice is a servant for time, 
 and the slave is a servant for life." A slave, however, 
 could be sold, and in some States he could be taken in 
 execution for his master s debts. 1 
 
 Slaves were sometimes admitted to be church members 
 and sometimes served in the militia. They were enlisted 
 in the army in the old French war. They were competent 
 witnesses even in capital trials and in suits of other slaves 
 for freedom. The right to marry was secured to them in 
 1705 by a statute of the province, and their banns were 
 published like those of white persons. In 1745 a negro 
 slave obtained from the Governor and Council a divorce for 
 his wife s adultery with a white man. 2 
 
 1 Dane s Abr., II., 313. Mr. Dane, in treating of Slavery in New England, 
 takes these illustrations, with slight variations, from Reeve s Domestic Rela 
 tions, p. 340, to which lie refers in the margin of his book that is, from the 
 chapter headed, " Of Slaver} as it once was in Connecticut." Dr. Moore, in 
 his " Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts," p. 100, takes exception 
 to some of these rights claimed, as applied to Massachusetts, and thinks they 
 are not sufficiently fortified by reference to statutes or to judicial decisions. 
 As to trover, in 1763 trover had been maintained in Massachusetts for a negro. 
 Quincy s Rep., Gray s note, 98. 
 
 Governor Hutchinson in a letter to Lord Hillsborough, in May, 1771, says, 
 that " slavery by the provincial laws gives no right to the life of the servant, and 
 a slave here is considered as a servant would be who had bound himself for a 
 term of years exceeding the ordinary term of human life; and I do not know 
 that it has been determined he may not have property in goods, notwithstand 
 ing he is called a slave." Moore, p. 132. 
 
 2 Quincy s Rep., Gray s note and citations on slavery in Massachusetts, p. 30. 
 
28 
 
 Reference has already been made to the opportunities 
 which Dr. Belknap had of knowing what slavery was in 
 Massachusetts. In 1795 he wrote to Judge Tucker of 
 Virginia as follows: "The condition of our slaves was 
 far from rigorous, no greater labor was exacted of them 
 than of white people. . . . They had always the free 
 enjoyment of the Sabbath as a day of rest. ... In the 
 maritime towns the negroes served either in families or at 
 mechanical employments ; and in either case they fared no 
 worse than other persons of the same class. In the country 
 they lived as well as their masters, and often sat down at 
 the same table in the true style of republican equality." l 
 
 The number of slaves in Massachusetts was never large. 
 Under the first charter they were inconsiderable. 2 Under 
 the province charter there were in 1708, 550; in 1720, 
 2,000, including a few Indians; in 1735, 2,600; in 1742, 
 1,514 in Boston; in 1754, 4,489; in 1764-65, 5,779; in 
 1776, 5,249. The last two items include both slaves and 
 free blacks. In 1790, the number of blacks, by the United 
 States census, was 6,001, which number included, says Mr. 
 Felt, about 200 mixed Indians. 3 From these statistics it is 
 reasonable to suppose the number of slaves in Massachu 
 setts never much exceeded 4,500, at any one time, and the 
 greatest proportion they ever bore to the whites was about 
 one to forty or fifty, say one slave to seven or eight families. 
 
 Such according to the best evidence now attainable was 
 slavery in Massachusetts. It is difficult to conceive of 
 slavery existing at all in a form less rigorous than that 
 which prevailed here. But even in this mild form it was 
 
 il Mass. Hist. Coll., IV., 200. 
 
 2 The statement of a " French Protestant Refugee," in 1689, that every house 
 in Boston has one or two negroes, must be an exaggeration (Report, etc., pub 
 lished in Brooklyn, 1868, p. 20). Edward Randolph, who was always extrava 
 gant in his statistics relating to Massachusetts, says, writing in 1676, "There 
 are not above 200 slaves in the colony"; and Governor Bradstreet, writing in 
 1680, reported " about 120 negroes in the colony." 
 
 3 Felt, Am. Stat. Asso., I., 208-214; Moore s Notes, p. 150; 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. 
 Coll., IV., 198. 
 
29 
 
 never in harmony with the general sentiment of the people. 1 
 This appears in many ways. In^the first place, but few 
 ever participated in it. Then follow other considerations. 
 We have already noticed the action of the General Court 
 of the colony in 1645 against the crime of kidnapping or 
 man-stealing on the coast of Africa. Then in 1701 Boston 
 instructed her representatives to use their influence in the 
 General Court to have an end put to negroes being slaves, 
 and to encourage the bringing in of white servants. Boston 
 at this time contained not less than three-fourths of all the 
 slaves in the province. From 1755 to 1766 frequent peti 
 tions were sent up to the General Court from Boston, 
 Salem, and from other parts of the State for the suppression 
 of slavery. In 1766 John Adams says he was present at 
 the trial of a suit of a negro woman against her master for 
 her liberty, and that he had often heard of such suits 
 before and we know that from that time forward such 
 suits were frequent, and juries always found for the negro. 
 John Adams said he "never knew a jury by a verdict to 
 determine that a man was a slave." 5 In 1771 and twice in 
 1774 the legislature passed bills to prohibit the importation 
 
 !It is not to be denied that the negro race, bond or free, was not regarded 
 here as a desirable element of the population. They were generally ignorant 
 and degraded, and required to be looked after and cared for as children, and 
 strict regulations were made to ensure order among them, to see that they 
 should have employment, and to provide for a healthy sanitary condition. 
 Special reference is here made to the Town Records and the Selectmen s 
 Records of the Town of Boston, printed in the Reports of the Record Com 
 missioners, for the orders adopted to secure these desirable ends. Strangers 
 were sometimes warned to depart, but in this respect white and black fared 
 alike, it being a precaution taken to avoid the contingent liability of supporting 
 paupers. For a like reason a law of the province in 1703 forbade the manu 
 mission of a slave unless the master gave bonds to support him if he came to 
 want. 
 
 A few years after the abolition of slavery here, in order to prevent an 
 irruption of negroes into the State, the legislature, on the 26 of March, 1788, 
 passed a law requiring all negroes not citizens of any State in the union, but 
 resident here, to depart in two months, under a severe penalty. " The design 
 of this law," says Dr. Belknap, " is to prevent deserting negroes from resorting 
 hither in hopes to obtain freedom, and then being thrown as a dead weight on 
 this community." 
 
 25 Mass. Hist. Coll., III., 401, 402; Hildreth, II., 563-565. 
 
30 
 
 of slaves, both of which failed to receive the assent of the 
 Royal Governor. 1 
 
 In 1776, September 17, two slaves taken on board an 
 English prize ship were brought into Salem and ordered to 
 be sold, but the General Court forbade the sale and ordered 
 such prisoners to be treated like all others ; and the House 
 resolved "that the selling and enslaving of the human 
 species is a direct violation of the natural rights alike vested 
 in them by their Creator, and utterly inconsistent with the 
 avowed principles on which this, and the other States have 
 carried on their struggle for liberty." 2 
 
 This public sentiment against slavery at last became so 
 strong that it brought about its abolition. It was largely 
 stimulated by the controversy with Great Britain, at which 
 time the whole subject of freedom was opened. John 
 
 1 Several attempts were made iu Massachusetts to abolish slavery by legisla 
 tion, and petitions were presented to the General Court from time to time 
 asking for its abolition ; several of these came from the negroes themselves. 
 In June, 1777, the question again came up before the legislature and a commit 
 tee of the house was chosen to prepare a letter to the Congress sitting at Phila 
 delphia on the subject and report it to the House. They say, " This question 
 has at different times for many years past been a subject of debate in former 
 houses, without any decision on the main principle, and although they have 
 generally appeared as individuals convinced of the rectitude of the measure, 
 nothing further has been done than to have a Bill before them, which after 
 some debate, from various circumstantial obstacles and embarrassments, has 
 subsided. The last House resumed this question in consequence of a petition 
 from a number of Africans, and ordered a Bill to be brought in, which after 
 one reading was referred over to this House, and is now before us, and has 
 been considered in a first and second reading. Convinced of the justice of the 
 measure, we are restrained from passing it only from an apprehension that our 
 brethren in the other colonies should conceive there was an impropriety in 
 our determining on a question which may in its nature and operation be of 
 extensive influence without previously consulting your Honors. We therefore 
 have ordered the Bill to lie, and ask the attention of your Honors to this matter, 
 that, if consistent with the union and harmony of the United States, we may 
 follow the dictates of our own understandings and feelings, at the same time 
 assuring your Honors that we have such a sacred regard to the union and har 
 mony of the United States as to conceive ourselves under obligations to refrain 
 from every measure that should have a tendency to injure that union which is 
 the basis and foundation of our defence and happiness." Proc. Mass. Hist. 
 Soc., X., 332, 333. After the reading of this letter it was " ordered to lie," and 
 the records are thereafter silent respecting it. 
 
 2 Moore s Notes, p. 148, et seq.; Felt s Salem, II., 278; Washburn s Lecture, 
 Lowell Inst. Course, p. 210. 
 
31 
 
 Adams says they talked about "the rights of mankind," 
 and afterwards omitted the kind. Some masters voluntarily 
 liberated their slaves, and some slaves claimed their liberty 
 in the courts, and by their counsel pleaded their rights as the 
 King s subjects ; that by the law of England no man could 
 be deprived of his liberty but by the judgment of his peers. 
 He claimed the common law right, which was ignoring 
 wholly the civil law on which slavery rested. And Judge 
 Dana told Dr. Belknap, as I infer from a note of the latter, 
 that on some occasions the plea was, that though the 
 slavery of parents be admitted yet no disability of that 
 kind could descend to children. 1 This would seem to be a 
 survival of the rule of limitation announced in the Body of 
 Liberties. But such judgments or opinions could have had 
 no legal effect beyond the immediate case before the court. 
 I have already quoted the remark of John Adams, that he 
 never knew a case in which the jury found against the 
 negro. 
 
 The slight hold which slavery had upon Massachusetts 
 about the period of the Eevolutionary War, and at the time 
 the Constitution of the State was adopted, in 1780, was 
 wholly loosened by the judicial decision in the well-known 
 case of Quork Walker, three years later, in which reference 
 was made to the now celebrated clause in the Bill of Rights 
 to the new constitution of the State. But it is a note 
 worthy fact that the arguments of counsel in favor of the 
 slave in that case, in one of the trials, as per brief of Levi 
 Lincoln, printed by me a few years ago in 5 Mass. Hist. 
 Soc. Coll., III., 438, barely alluded to the Constitution, 
 but base their pleas almost wholly on what we now call the 
 higher law doctrine that there was never any law in the 
 State establishing slavery, and that all laws against natural 
 rights are void. And Judge Cushing s charge and opinion 
 in the final suit before the Supreme Judicial Court are 
 much the same. 2 
 
 i Belknap to Judge Tucker as above. 
 . Mass. Hist. Soc., XIII., 294. 
 
32 
 
 What the immediate practical effect of this decision was 
 upon the master and slave we know pretty well. That 
 many slaves remained with their masters is certain. The 
 decision was, no doubt, generally welcomed, and what 
 slaves wished to leave did so. 
 
 Dr. Belknap tells us of the condition of the liberated 
 slaves. Many of those in the country who left their masters 
 came to the seaport towns. Often their fate was a hard one, 
 and physically their last condition was worse than the first. 
 
 The foregoing statement of what slavery was in Massa 
 chusetts and how it ended, is nearly conclusive evidence of 
 the falsity of the charge we are considering. But this is 
 not all. Dr. Belknap tells us that "for the negro to be 
 sold to the West Indies or to Carolina was the highest 
 punishment that could be inflicted or threatened." 1 
 
 The horror with which the kidnapping of negroes was 
 regarded, that is the decoying of them out of the State for 
 sale down south, or in the West Indies, was shown in a 
 case which occurred in the month of February, 1788. 
 One Avery, a native of Connecticut, by the assistance of 
 another fellow, decoyed three unsuspecting black men on 
 board a vessel in Boston harbor, and sent them down into 
 the hold to work. While thus employed the vessel set sail 
 and went to sea, having been previously cleared for Marti- 
 nico. Governor Hancock and Mr. L Etombe, the French 
 consul, at once wrote letters to the governors of all the 
 islands in the West Indies in favor of the negroes. The 
 men were offered for sale at the Danish island of St. 
 Bartholomew. They told their story publicly and the 
 governor of the island prevented the sale. They were 
 liberated and arrived at Boston on the 29th of July follow 
 ing, which was a day of jubilee, says Dr. Belknap, not only 
 among their countrymen, but among all the friends of jus 
 tice and humanity. 2 
 
 il Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., IV., 200. 
 
 2 Dr. Belknap in 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., IV., 204, 205. 
 
 Advantage was taken of this affair to renew the application to the legislature 
 
33 
 
 What a singular phenomenon would be presented of a 
 community, which abolished slavery because they believed 
 it was wrong, and then turned round and sold their slaves 
 into a worse bondage. 
 
 But the census refutes the story. If the negroes were 
 run down south, they came back again to be counted. I 
 have already cited the facts of the census. In 1776, seven 
 years before the abolition of slavery, there were 5,249 
 blacks in the colony. ^In 1790 the United States census 
 finds 6,001 colored persons here, which number includes 
 some 200 mixed Indians. 1 Here they are, and here they 
 lived and died. 
 
 It is not impossible that there has been, here and there, 
 an isolated case of a slave being sold to go south, but that 
 does not sustain the charge. Crimes are committed in 
 every community. "There are traditions of slavery and 
 slave-holding times lingering in many families and villages 
 in Massachusetts. Slavery, its incidents and evils are dis 
 cussed in town histories, sermons and other writings, but 
 
 for the abolition of the slave-trade, that is, to prohibit any citizen of the State 
 from pursuing the business. The colored population too joined in the petition, 
 and Dr. Belknap and other clergymen lent their influence. An act was passed 
 March 26, 1788, " to prevent the slave-trade, and granting relief to the families 
 of such unhappy persons as may be kidnapped or decoyed away from this 
 Commonwealth." It was enacted " that no citizen, residing within this Com 
 monwealth shall, for himself or any other person, either as master, factor, 
 supercargo, owner, or hirer in whole or in part, of any vessel, directly or 
 indirectly, import or transport, or buy, or sell, or receive on board his or their 
 vessel, with intent to cause to be imported or transported any of the inhabitants 
 of any state or kingdom in Africa, as slaves, or servants for term of years, on 
 penalty of fifty pounds for every person so received on board . . . and two 
 hundred pounds for every vessel fitted out with such intent . . . and all insur 
 ance made on such vessels shall be void." 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., IV., 202, 
 203. Dr. Belknap, in March, 1790, speaks of a person, who, to evade the laws 
 of the State had gone to France " to fit out his ship for the detested business." 
 He had begged a copy of Clarkson s Essay to send to this man, hoping it might 
 " serve to gall his conscience a little," and some time or other " to bring him to 
 serious recollection." 5 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., III., 216. 
 
 l l do not refer above to the census returns of 1784, giving 4,377 blacks, nor 
 to those of 1786, giving 4,371 blacks, because Mr. Felt says these returns are 
 made without allowances for such " as may have been either deflcient or not 
 made at all." (Statist. Asso., I., 214.) 
 
34 
 
 after careful examination and inquiry," says an intelligent 
 and careful investigator of this subject, "I have been able 
 to find but one instance of selling slaves to go south. In 
 Wilbraham, a remote town nearly bordering on the State 
 of Connecticut, there were five slaves at the time of the 
 adoption of the Constitution, in 1780, and two of these, it 
 is said, were decoyed by their masters into Connecticut and 
 thence on board a vessel at Hartford, which dropped down 
 the river and they were never more heard of in Wilbraham." 
 The story, from the position of the parties involved, seems 
 almost incredible, but the particulars are told by Dr. II. P. 
 Stebbins in his " Historical Address," at the centennial 
 celebration of the town of Wilbraham in June, 1863. I 
 had heard of this affair, and have searched for other cases. 
 I have in my own library a large number of town histories 
 and centennial addresses, including that of Dr. Stebbins, 
 referred to above, and I have examined and caused to be 
 examined for me, altogether, some one hundred and fifty 
 town histories of this State for this purpose ; but the case 
 of Wilbraham stands alone. 1 
 
 1 Since this paper was read before this Society I have had a favorable oppor 
 tunity of examining further into the truth of this Wilbraham story, and it 
 seems to me very doubtful. Tb.3 author of the address was certainly mistaken 
 in some of his alleged facts, and I cannot but think that the main story that 
 the two negroes referred to were sold down south is not true. 
 
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