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In 1641, Massachusetts passed its Body of Liberties, which gave legal sanction to certain kinds of slavery. [36] There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us.
When the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865 a wave of change blew in, it annulled the Fugitive Slave Act and the legislation that came with it. [4] This was a significant shift because slaves were now beginning to be considered as persons not property, persons who had rights and who were covered under the 4th amendment.
Evolution of the enslaved population of the United States as a percentage of the population of each state, 1790–1860. Following the creation of the United States in 1776 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, the legal status of slavery was generally a matter for individual U.S. state legislatures and judiciaries (outside of several historically significant exceptions ...
In this manner, slavery lost any legal protection in Massachusetts, making it a tortious act under the law, effectively abolishing it within the Commonwealth. [10] In 1976 by amendment Article CVI, this article was amended to change the word "men" to "people".
Some number of these individuals appear to have been treated like indentured servants, since slave laws were not passed until later, in 1641 in Massachusetts and in 1661 in Virginia. [53] But from the beginning, in accordance with the custom of the Atlantic slave trade , most of this relatively small group, appear to have been treated as slaves ...
There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to their owner. Enforcement of these ...
Similarly, the Fifth Amendment declares that 'no person' could be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." [7] The Fifth Amendment, however, was a two-edged sword. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney held that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the ...
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decisions in Walker v. Jennison and Commonwealth v. Jennison established the basis for ending slavery in Massachusetts on constitutional grounds. Still, no law or amendment to the state constitution was passed. Instead, slavery gradually ended "voluntarily" in the state over the next decade.