In the 1770s, two major struggles for freedom were coming to a head in Massachusetts. As the colonists became increasingly inspired to achieve independence from the British, enslaved people channeled that same determination to seek freedom from the colonists. Throughout the 1770s, many enslaved people petitioned the colony government for freedom to no avail. Significant progress seemingly did not occur until 1780, when Massachusetts adopted a new state constitution that effectively outlawed slavery in the Commonwealth.
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 stated, “All men are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.” It opened the doors for enslaved people like Elizabeth Freeman to be freed. Freeman was enslaved by John Ashley in Sheffield, Massachusetts, for 30 years. She dreamed of the possibility of freedom after she overheard a reading of the Declaration of Independence. She sought Theodore Sedgewick, a prominent abolitionist lawyer in Massachusetts at the time, who brought a suit against John Ashley in 1781, which argued that under the Massachusetts State Constitution, slavery could not be legally upheld. The jury agreed, and Freeman was freed in one of the most significant court cases in Massachusetts history.
While slavery was not made illegal in the colony until the 1780s, enslaved individuals were freed in certain circumstances. Peter Salem was a revolutionary who fought many battles, including the Battle of Bunker Hill, Lexington, Saratoga, and more. He was born into slavery to Jerimiah Belknap and was sold to Major Lawson Buckminster, who freed Salem to enlist and fight as a Minute Man. Salem was in the heart of battle during the Battle of Bunker Hill and was attributed with firing the shot that killed Major John Pitcairn, the leader of the British attack. Salem is considered to be featured in John Trumbull’s famous painting The Battle of Bunker’s Hill.
With slavery being effectively outlawed in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth became a hub for formerly enslaved people and those who escaped from other states. Frederick Douglass, enslaved in Maryland for many years, fled to Massachusetts in 1838, settling in New Bedford. There, he founded a community of other formerly enslaved people and abolitionists, most notably abolitionists Nathan and Polly Johnson and William Lloyd Garrison, who motivated Douglass to become a leader of the Massachusetts abolitionist movement. This motivation led him to join the Hundred Conventions project with the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, where he toured the United States, including New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, throughout 1843. Douglass encountered severe backlash, including one brutal attack in Indiana, resulting in a broken hand that never fully recovered. Douglass was a major leader and inspiration for the abolitionist movement, which would have been much more difficult without the freed slave community in Massachusetts.
Despite the success of these individuals, formerly enslaved people still faced extreme difficulties, and many ended up in indentured servitude. Massachusetts would not have become the community for formerly enslaved people that it was without the perseverance and bravery of those like Elizabeth Freeman, Peter Salem, and Fredrick Douglass, among many others.
