A Dred-ed Day of Reckoning
The Dred Scott decision - one of the most notorious cases to ever be decided by the United States Supreme Court - was the culmination of Freedom Suits, the legal cases brought on behalf of black slaves and Indian indentured servants to gain their freedom. In this edition of Revealed: Behind the Hidden Legal Figures Podcast, we highlight two freedom suits from Massachusetts referenced in our current episode that were the touchstone of the era.; Brom and Bett v. Ashley and Walker v. Jennison.
Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman
Plaintiff in 1781 Freedom Suit in Massachusetts
Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1788)
Slavery in New England was said to have been on a relatively small scale when compared with the rest of the United States. There were household slaves in Boston who cooked the meals and drove the coaches. They were not so extensive in number to cause embarrassment or blemish to the Massachusetts colony, but there was a sufficient number as to make plain the incompatibility with the Declaration of Independence. One of those who figured in that number was Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman. She was born around 1743 and was given to Hannah, the daughter of Peter Hogeboom, when she married John Ashley. Ashley was a wealthy businessman and political leader who was also a Yale-educated lawyer.
Mum Bett was described as “a remarkable woman” possessing a “native majesty of deportment” and an “indomitable, irresistible will.” A judge once commented that she “had no superiors and few equals.” Her indomitable spirit was on vivid display the day Hannah Ashley grabbed a large iron shovel that had just been used to clean the oven and attempted to beat another house servant for stealing a cake. Mum Bett intervened. “Madam never again laid her hand on Lizzy,” she would later say. “I had a bad arm all winter, but Madam got the worst of it. And when people said to me right before Madam, ‘why Betty, what ails your arm?’ I only answered, ‘ask missus.’”
After the Revolutionary war was over, Bett was at the village meeting house in Sheffield and she overheard the Declaration of Independence and the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution read. The next day she went to the law office of Theodore Sedwick, who in 1773 had written the Sheffield Resolves, a manifesto of individual rights and petition against British tyranny, and who was beginning his legal and political career. She told Sedgwick that she had heard the words of the Declaration and the state constitution: “Sir, I heard that paper read yesterday that says, ‘all men are created equal, and that every man has a right to freedom.’ I am not a dumb critter. Won’t the law give me my freedom?”
Sedgwick and Tapping Reeve, founder of America’s first law school presented her freedom suit petition to the court winning her liberation in 1781. The jury foreman, Jonathon Holcum, in announcing the verdict, quoting the Sheffield Resolves as the basis for their decision, “mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property.”
She took the surname Freeman and transferred herself to the employ of Sedgwick serving as a nurse, or governess in the household. Even though she lived another forty-eight years, until her death on December 28, 1829, Mum Bett was adamant about her fierce determination to live as a freewoman:
Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it - just to stand one minute on God’s airth [sic] a free woman - I would.
Caldwell Farm
Barre, Massachusetts property where Quok Walker took refuge in 1782
Walker v. Jennison, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1783)
In 1753 Mingo and Dinah, Ghanian natives, brought a new life into being in Massachusetts. They named the boy, Kwaku, which means born on Wednesday. In court papers, his name was spelled “Quok” and “Quoku”. James Caldwell acquired the family the next year. Kwaku was promised his freedom when he turned twenty-five, but Caldwell died with Kwaku was ten. Mrs. Caldwell married Nathaniel Jennison and renewed the promise lowering the age to twenty-one. Mrs. Caldwell died when Kwaku was nineteen, and Jennison refused to honor the promise. In 1781, when he was 28, Kwaku ran away and hired himself out to Seth and John Caldwell, James Caldwell’s brothers. Jennison tracked him down, beat him and brought him back to his farm. Three lawsuits resulted from these incidents.
Each of the lawsuits were held during the revolutionary era, when the notion of freedom was the prevailing sentiment and attitude of the day. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 contained a provision of liberty. This was the same provision Mum Bett heard read in the village meeting house. The language was clear, “all men are born free, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberty.
In the first one, Jennison v. Caldwell, a court agreed with Nathaniel Jennison that the Caldwell brothers had deprived him of the benefit of his lawful servant and awarded him twenty-five pounds. The Caldwell’s appealed and the second jury, relying on the straightforward language of the state constitution, found that Kwaku was a free man and that he had every right to contract his labor to the Caldwell’s and that they owed no damages to Jennison.
In the second case, Quok Walker v. Jennison, where Kwaku sued Jennison for assault and battery. His lawyers, Levi Lincoln and Caleb Strong also argued that slavery was contrary to both the Bible and the Massachusetts Constitution. The jury agreed and awarded Kwaku fifty pounds in damages. Jennison appealed but the case was dismissed by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
The third case was brought by the Attorney General against Jennison for assault and battery. This case was styled Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Jennison.
Judge William Cushing
Chief Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
After the evidence had been presented, Judge William Cushing charged the jury with instructions on the proper way to consider the case. Relying in part on the precedent set two years earlier and his view of the constitution, Cushing’s instructions went straight to the point:
As to ye doctrine of slavery and ye right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and selling and treatitng them as we do our horses and cattle, that (it is true) has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage -- a usage which took its origin from ye practice of some of ye European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then Colonies, for ye benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by ye example of others, a different idea has taken place with ye people of America, more favorable to ye natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven (without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses-features) has inspired all ye human race. And upon this ground our Constitution of Government, by which ye people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal -- and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property -- and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being ye case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract
Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Jennison effectively abolished slavery in Massachusetts. The freedom suits of Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman and Kwaku Walker laid the groundwork for the more than 570 Freedom Suits that would make their way throughout state appellate courts across the country, including the Dred Scott case.
