Forward: I wrote this paper almost 40 years ago while I was a graduate student at Harvard. As I reread it, I thought how I could have done a better job. Yet, much, if not most, of the content is unknown to the public at large today. And so, I offer it as a view of Massachusetts, and really all of New England, prior to the Revolutionary war. What follows has been edited from the original where I have left out passages. Also, I have additional sources of my material which I will willingly give to any who ask.

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The first positive proof we have of slavery coming to Massachusetts is in the log of the ship Desire. Lt. Davenport reported in a marginal note of the ship’s log that, “disbursed for the slaves, which, when they have earned it, hee is to repay it back againe.” (Williams, George W. History of the Negro Race in America 1619 – 1880, 1st ed., 2nd Vol., (New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1968) p. 175) In payment to Lt. Davenport the Colony of Massachusetts, at the charge of the General Court, ordered Lt. Davenport be paid the sum of 3 pounds 8 shillings. It would appear that not only were slaves delivered by Lt. Davenport but that the Government found the practice acceptable.

These slaves, as was true in all the colonies, were first introduced into individual families. From there they found their way into the community. There was never much use for slavery in Massachusetts and from the outset a slave’s chief occupation was more along the lines of a servant or indentured worker. According to Lorenzo Greene in his book, “The Negro in Colonial New England,” there are no records of slavery existing on the farms of Massachusetts. With the black people in the public’s midst, and having a penchant for law making, the famous “Body of Liberties” became the first statute establishing slavery in America. It stated: “It is ordered by this court, and the authority thereof; that there shall never be any bond slavery, villainage or captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us, and such shall have the liberties and Christain usage which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require; provided this exempts none from servitude, who shall be judged thereto by authority.” (Williams, George W., 1: 117) This law, as full of holes as appears, stood for the duration of slavery in the state and was not once changed. The interpretation of the law was, however, challenged.

Until the year 1644 slaves arrived in Massachusetts at a very slow pace and always from the West Indies, Barbados in particular. It was in that year that New England traders attempted a direct trade from Africa using Barbados as a weigh station. The Boston ships sailed directly to Africa to purchase slaves. From there they took the slaves to Barbados and exchanged them for sugar, salt, wine and tobacco. This practice, however, was short lived. Fearing confiscation of their cargo by the powerful Dutch and Royal English Trading Companies, the Massachusetts shippers were quick to abandon this particular form of trade. There were a few who continued but chose to get slaves from the eastern coast of Africa and Madagascar.

The “Body of Liberties” law was actually put to test when in 1678 a Sandwich man was brought to trial for attempting to sell 3 Pequod Indians. The court decided that since the Indians had done harm to the3 man’s property and the Pequods could not repay him, he had the right to sell them into slavery. (Washburn, Emory, Slavery As it Once Existed in Massachusetts, diss., The Lowell Institute, 1869, Boston: Press of John Wilson and Son, p. 15)

But an even more interesting case happened some ninety years later. In the case of James v. Lechmere involving the right of a master to hold slaves, Dr. Belknap, prosecutor for the colony, cited English law which stated, “. . . all persons born or residing in the Province to be as free as the King’s subjects in Great Britain; that by the laws of England, no man can be deprived of his liberty, but by the judgment of his peers;” (Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, The Extinction of Slavery in Massachusetts, Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1858, p. 335)

The decision of the court went in favor of the Negro. This seems to have set a precedent; the government of Massachusetts would no longer tolerate slavery, even though a law protecting it still existed. The judgment spelled the beginning of the end of slavery in Massachusetts.

Although the Puritans of Massachusetts were able to accept the existence of slavery within their colony, it was never very popular. In 1680, slaves accounted for less than 200 of the total population and by 1700 there were but 400.

It is likely that economics played a large role in keeping down the total number of slaves. Massachusetts was by and large a colony of relatively small farms. There were no plantations as existed in the middle and southern colonies. Massachusetts was founded by merchants who fully expected to set up a lucrative trade with England. Massachusetts always prided itself on self-reliance since the two largest industries of the colony were fishing and ship building. It is easy to see how there was little use for slavery.

The slave in Massachusetts, and in most of Northern New England, enjoyed a dual status. He was subject to what few slave laws there were but was also accorded the rights to all the laws afforded free men. The slave law, of course, always took precedent.

In 1681 a Mr. Saffin was brought to court for smuggling slaves out of Rhode Island and into Massachusetts. He was found guilty and fined accordingly. Although slavery was legal, the courts looked upon this as a clear case of abduction of one man by another. The fine, however, was minimal in this case. Saffin openly continued in his occupation. Many of his letters to potential customers in the towns surrounding Boston still exist which attest to this fact.

Interestingly, many of the people who bought the slaves from Saffin in turn sold them to people in New Hampshire. Also, and curiously, Saffin was a judge in the Massachusetts colony.

There exists little information on what slaves did exist in the colony up to 1700. First consider the number of slaves present was always fewer than 400. Also, the fact that there were truly no unusual incidents, that we know of, surrounding any slave or the slave trade. This lack of facts can now be put in perspective. Consider for a minute how much trouble historians have gone through to gather technically correct information about the infamous witch trials of 1692. We still are admittedly missing many important features of this most famous event. Boyer and Nissenbaum in their book, Salem Possessed, attest to the great difficulty in gathering information on an event one would expect the be well-documented. Yet such is not the case. The effort to gather information about slavery, which is quite obscure for Massachusetts, is ever so much more difficult.

One fact which may help to explain this is that the Puritans were quick to accept the Negro into their churches without any special rules. In fact, in 1693, Cotton Mather wrote a paper called, Rules For the Society of Negroes. Of the nine rules he lays out in only one, rule number VII, does he even mention the Negro. In it he states that the Puritan community shall do good towards “Negro Servants.” He advised the black person that should he run away, he shall be punished but admonished the master not to be found at fault at the pain of being driven from the fold. The remaining eight rules could be easily applied to any Puritan, and probably were.

The slave always maintained the status of a second-class citizen. He was really never fully accepted as an equal, even by the righteous Puritans. He was never to be trusted and was frequently feared. Except that this fear was transmitted by some early documents, it is not clear why the Massachusetts colonists would fear the black man. Clearly there was little reason to be concerned about an insurrection.

The early 1700s brought on a radical change. The merchants of Massachusetts had had a long time to set up the triangle trade involving slaves. It was about this time that Massachusetts slavers started taking their cargo to the Southern Colonies. This could have been caused by the fact that the colony’s fathers put a 4-pound tariff, a considerable sum, on each slave coming into the port of Boston. Still, many slavers must have found a great profit in the trade as the slave population grew to 4,500 in 1755. (Green, Lorenzo Johnston, The Negro in Colonial New England, New York: Atheneum, 1968, p. 81)

By 1705, slave trade was so open in Boston that slave traders were not afraid to publish upcoming sales of slaves in the local newspapers. Gov. Dudley pointed out the reason slave prices were so reduced was that the slaves were the worst of the lot for Virginians and were not able to be sold there. But Dudley’s assertion was incorrect. The reason they were so much cheaper was because many of them had become fluent in English, were quick docile, and to some extent, well educated. Those facts were unacceptable to the Virginia plantation owner. But this was quite favorable to the New England buyer who went to a lady who needed a companion, a blacksmith who needed a helper, the shopkeeper who needed someone to cleanup and tend to his store while he was at lunch or other engagement. They were also more than adequate coachmen, maids, and other domestics which the wealthy of Boston needed.

A curiosity was that Massachusetts Puritan Law required that slaves be married in the usual manner referring to the white population. This is just one more example of the contradiction of Northern slavery to that of the South. The Puritan code and Massachusetts laws further required masters to apply all laws to his slaves once married as were applicable to himself. All slave marriages were duly recorded alongside white marriages. There was one oddity to this law, however. When a free “Negro” man married a slave, the master gained the services of the free man and all his children. Conversely, when a free woman married a black man, she served her husband’s master, and her children were born free. This law infuriated the slave owner who happened to have a free woman married to his male slave. He was required by law to care for her children but could not retain them for servitude once they reached the age of 14.

Once free, however, many former slaves found themselves in lucrative positions. Many former slaves had worked them same position as an apprentice. These former slaves continued their work, now as free men, as ship carpenters, anchor makers, rope makers, coopers, blacksmiths, printers, tailors, sawyers and house carpenters. (Green, Lorenzo, p. 113) These former slaves, unfit for southern slavery, did quite well in the north. In the long run they outstripped their southern counterparts by aiding a labor short market and bringing wealth into the community.

By the time of the Revolution, slavery, as it existed in al New England, was of the token variety, not hard to live under and easily gotten out of. To wit, it was not unusual for a slave to simply walk away from his master forever. He had little fear of being chased down. Even once discovered, a runaway slave had an excellent chance of being protected by the community in which he was living than being returned to his master. New Englanders carried this to an extreme, as infrequently a slave from a southern state made his way to Massachusetts. Once there, the citizens did all they could within their power to keep him. He was protected by English and Colony Law.

For the most part, slaves, once freed, were just as mistrusted and hated as their southern brethren. They were required to become members of the church and baptized.

The beginning of the end of slavery in Massachusetts happened when Elihu Coleman of Nantucket wrote a book against slavery. By 1765, the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts had caught on. Pamphlets and newspapers were increasingly discussing the subject. In March 13, 1767, a bill was presented to the house of representatives of Massachusetts demanding that slavery as a practice was “unwarrantable and unlawful.” The bill was ultimately defeated but a compromise was agreed upon which stated that slavery had to be abolished. In 1773 another bill to abolish slavery was introduced but this time, passed.

By the time of the Revolution, few slaves still existed, and slave ships were no longer welcomed in Boston. Other New England colonies quickly followed suit.