“I suppose you know very well how we shall maintain 20 Moors cheaper than one English Servant.”
– Emmanuel Downing to Governor John Winthrop, 1630’s
”In 1641 Massachusetts became the first English colony to legalize slavery. Although some questioned its morality, the institution survived until after the Revolution.
- Massachusetts Historical Society
The Selling of Joseph
Massachusetts was founded by Puritans who were famously harsh, but also moralistic. Samuel Sewall, a judge in the Salem Witch Trials, admitted his errors and thought more deeply about injustice. In 1700 he published the Selling of Joseph, often called the fi rst anti-slavery tract. The Puritan founders also had a unique interest in education (linking literacy with bible reading.) By establishing public schools and Harvard College in the seventeenth century they may have planted the seeds for later reform.
Morals and Moralizing
It seems that each generation has moral blind spots. In this 1765 edition of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, the left column has an idealistic protest against the Stamp Act and its burden on “the widow, the orphan and others who have few on earth to help or even pity them.” The right column offers a reward for the capture of a runaway slave and an ad for the sale of a “likely Negro Girl about 16.”
Prince Hall founded an African lodge of Masons.
In later generations Prince Hall Masons have included sociologist W.E.B. DuBois and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
“Where was the moral issue?”
Vetoing a bill to end the slave trade in 1771, colonial governor Thomas Hutchinson asked “where was the moral issue?”
- State House Art Collection