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The Massachusetts Body of Liberties was the first legal code established in New England, compiled by Puritan minister Nathaniel Ward. The laws were established by the Massachusetts General Court in 1641. The Body of Liberties begins by establishing the exclusive right of the General Court to legislate and dictate the "Countenance of Authority".
The law was one of a series of legislative acts directed at public education in the colony. The first Massachusetts School Law of 1642 broke with English tradition by transferring educational supervision from the clergy to the selectmen of the colony, empowering them to assess the education of children "to read & understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country."
Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen slaves appeared in Massachusetts courts to sue their owners for freedom. [45] In 1766, John Adams' colleague Benjamin Kent won the first trial in the United States (and Massachusetts) to free a slave (Slew vs. Whipple). [5] [46] [47] [6] [7] [48] There were three other trials that are noteworthy, two civil and ...
A slave owned by Beatty had bought a slave girl Sally and manumitted her. Chief Justice John Rutledge instructed the jury that such an act of generosity on Sally's behalf should not be overturned. 1806: Hudgins v. Wright: Virginia Supreme Court: Jackey Wright and her two children were freed based on her claim of maternal descent from Native ...
In 1833, Alabama enacted a law that fined anyone who undertook a slave's education between $250 and $550; the law also prohibited any assembly of African Americans—slave or free—unless five slave owners were present or an African-American preacher had previously been licensed by an approved denomination.
In 1850, Brown founded his first militant, anti-slavery organization – The League of the Gileadites – in Springfield, to protect escaped slaves from 1850s Fugitive Slave Act. Massachusetts was a hotbed of abolitionism – particularly the progressive cities of Boston and Springfield – and contributed to subsequent actions of the state ...
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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 ...