Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Elizabeth Freeman (c. 1744 – December 28, 1829), also known as Mumbet, [a] was one of the first enslaved African Americans to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman's favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts .
After the Revolution, Elizabeth Freeman (known also as Mum Bett), a slave in Massachusetts, filed for her freedom in the County Court of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This case set a state precedent, based on the ruling that slavery was irreconcilable with the new state constitution of 1780.
In 1781, Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved woman also known as Mum Bett, sued for freedom and won in county court based on her claim that slavery was inconsistent with the state constitution's declaration that "All men are born free and equal." Her case was cited by the state court in Quock Walker's cases shortly thereafter.
Elizabeth Freeman (unknown-1829) ... Her legacy is indelible in the movement to abolish slavery, as she is documented to have made approximately 13 trips through the Underground Railroad, leading ...
Instead slavery gradually ended "voluntarily" in the state over the next decade. The decisions in the Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker trials had removed its legal support and slavery was said to end by erosion. Some masters manumitted their slaves formally and arranged to pay them wages for continued labor.
In 1780, Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker used language from the new Massachusetts constitution that declared all men were born free and equal in freedom suits to gain release from slavery. A free Black businessman in Boston named Paul Cuffe sought to be excused from paying taxes since he had no voting rights.
The status of three slaves who traveled from Kentucky to the free states of Indiana and Ohio depended on Kentucky slave law rather than Ohio law, which had abolished slavery. 1852: Lemmon v. New York: Superior Court of the City of New York: Granted freedom to slaves who were brought into New York by their Virginia slave owners, while in transit ...
Elizabeth Freeman brought the first legal test of the constitutionality of slavery in Massachusetts after the American Revolution, asserting that the state's new constitution and its assertions of men's equality under the law meant that slavery could not exist.