Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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".
Prior to 1641, no statutes guided this emerging trade in indigenous slaves. Instead, as historian Margaret Newell has argued, the colonists acted in self-interest and justified their practice after the fact, by referring to existing European notions of a just war (a theory later codified in the Body of Liberties). [16]
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 ...
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 ...
In 1638, Maverick was recorded as purchasing black slaves, becoming one of the earliest slave-owners in Massachusetts. In 1638, Maverick ordered one of his male black slaves to rape one of his female slaves in order to "breed negros", an act which shocked visiting English writer, John Josselyn , who comforted the victim. [ 5 ]
The history of a Massachusetts beach named after an enslaved African American is the focus of new efforts to recognize the role of slavery in the state. Enslaved man who inspired beach name and ...
A mock slave auction held on Snapchat was directed at two particular students at Southwick Regional School, investigators allege SOUTHWICK, […] The post Massachusetts investigators pursue six ...
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. Her suit, Brom and Bett v.