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After the war's end in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified by the states, including Massachusetts, which legally abolished slavery in the United States and ended the threat of enslavement or re-enslavement once and for all. This was the final date when slavery was formally outlawed in Massachusetts ...
As a result of Burns's trial, Massachusetts passed the most progressive liberty law the nation had seen up until 1854. [22] The law stated that slave claimants were not allowed to be on state property, fugitive slaves were required to have a trial by jury , and slave claimants had to produce two credible and unbiased witnesses to prove the ...
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".
Decker's slave Harry was freed, and slaves residing in the Northwest Territory become free as per the Ordinance of 1787, and may assert their rights in court. 1820: Polly v. Lasselle: Supreme Court of Indiana: Indiana gave freedom to blacks in the state who had been held as slaves in the territory prior to Indiana's state constitutional ban on ...
States passed numerous laws to regulate the slave trade and the status of persons. Under the Act of Assembly of Virginia Act of 1785, Chapter 77, enslaved persons who were born in another state and brought into Virginia after the date of the act would be freed after spending one year in the state.
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 ...
It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865. [30] The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by the 27th of the then 36 states, fulfilling the constitutional requirement of ratification by 3/4 of states, on December 6, 1865. [30]
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.