USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 18
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"Gookin visited England in 1656, and remained there two or three years. He had an interview with Cromwell, and obtained some advantages for a certain class of emigrants to this country. Gookin, a Puritan himself, natur- ally was an admirer of Cromwell. A zealous non-conformist, he naturally hated the King who persecuted everything but royalty and the church. What
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was more natural than that the recollection of the King's crushing defeat at Worcester should originate the idea of giving the new settlement the name of the place where he was overwhelmed? These facts furnish at least a respect- able foundation for this tradition to rest upon, and it seems to me no vision- ary speculation to claim that the idea of naming the new settlement, Worces- ter, as a defiance to the King, originated in the mind of the 'Kentish Soldier.'"
It is also certain that no sentimental ties existed between the early settlers of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Worcester, England-nothing to induce them to take the name for old times' sake.
CHAPTER XVII.
Negro Slavery in Worcester County
Negro slavery existed in Worcester County from early in the settlement to almost the close of the Revolution. Historians have passed by the subject, perhaps because they regarded it as an unessential element in the life of the people. In reality it was an institution of considerable social and economic importance. It was accepted by all classes like any other long familiar cus- tom. Men and women lost nothing in the regard of their neighbors because they were slaveowners. Yet almost from the beginning of the Bay Colony there was a sentiment against holding human beings in bondage, which grew stronger with succeeding generations and found expression in various ways. But, so long as England was in power, each effort at emancipation broke against the might of the Royal African Company.
The slave-trade, fostered and protected in every possible way by the English Government, brought to the Thirteen Colonies from Africa a never- ending procession of cargoes of men, women and children. In the South they were bought eagerly for labor on the plantations, excepting at times when the supply was too great for easy absorption. In Massachusetts there was a mod- erate demand. Worcester County evidently had its fair share of these unfor- tunate people. One of them, Quork Walker, born in Rutland, owned in Barre, yielding to friendly advice and rebelling at his bondage, was the central figure in a famous case tried in Worcester, which resulted in the complete and final emancipation of his race in Massachusetts.
In the towns the negroes were used chiefly as household servants. In the country the men were farm laborers and the women did housework. Poor men did not own them, for their cost was relatively high, though low com- pared with prices sometimes paid in the southern Colonies. They were taxed as chattels, and were bought and sold without attracting more than interested attention. The early newspaper carried "For Sale" advertisements, offering men and women in the market. It often happened that children of slaves
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were not desired by their owners, as being troublesome and expensive to raise, and they were given away as soon as weaned "like pigs or puppies," as one of the early abolitionists expressed it. Occasionally an owner's desire to be rid of them was expressed in an advertisement. Negroes were even sold "to go South," usually meaning the plantation, which to, the northern slave was a synonym for perdition. Such was the worst side of slavery as it existed in Worcester County.
Rarely, however, were the black slaves treated brutally in the infliction of punishment. On the farm they worked with their masters in the field. In some families, it is said, they ate at the same table. They were made as com- fortable as possible. In fact, it was necessary that they be well cared for, for the rigors of the New England climate, particularly under conditions in which people were compelled to live in those early days, were hard on the constitu- tions of beings accustomed to the sweltering tropic dampness of the West Coast of Africa. Some of them quickly yielded to tuberculosis. Like every one else in those pre-vaccination days, they had to take their chances with smallpox. Eventually, most of them became acclimated. But they were never able to stand up to hard labor with vigorous white men.
In 1651 two hundred and seventy-four Scots, captured in war by the English, were sold in the Colony, all in one year. They were considered much better slaves than the blacks, because, to quote Governor Dudley, they "were serviceable in war presently, and after became planters," thus adding to the military and productive strength of the Colony. The Scotchmen, by- the-bye, eventually secured their freedom, married and settled down, and became useful and respected citizens. There is no reason to doubt that the county got some of them. The price paid for them was much higher than that at which an African could be bought.
In the proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 1795 we read: "The condition of our slaves was far from rigorous. No greater labor was exacted of them than of white people; in general they were not able to perform so much. They had always free enjoyment of the Sabbath as a day of rest. A house of correction, to which disorderly persons of all colors were sent, formed one object of terror to them; but to be sold to the West Indies or to Carolina was the highest punishment that could be threat- ened or inflicted.
"Persons of illiberal or tyrannical dispositions would sometimes abuse them, but, in general, their treatment was humane, especially if their own tempers were mild and peaceable. They were never enrolled in the militia, but on days of military training, and other seasons of festivity, they were indulged in such diversions as were agreeable to them. Some of the owners
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were careful to instruct them in reading and in the doctrines and duties of religion."
Sidelights on Local Slavery-So far as we have been able to discover, no contemporaneous writer left any intimate account of slavery as it was carried on in Massachusetts. A little insight may be obtained from a few paragraphs by the late Judge William T. Forbes in his History of Westboro, telling of life in the town at the beginning of the nineteenth century:
"The earliest slave of whom we have any record is the one bought by Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, the first settled minister of the town, four years after he settled here, named Maro. He paid £74 'which was the price of him,' to his father, in Boston, then started out for Westboro on horseback, Maro running on foot. A little more than a year afterwards he speaks in his journal of his various afflictions, and adds : 'But especially Maro at point of death' and next day he writes: 'Dark as it has been with us, it became much darker about the sun setting, The Sun of Maro's life Set,'" which seems to interpret that Maro passed out of slavery into freedom.
"In a census of slaves taken in 1754," continues Judge Forbes, "Westboro is reported as having six owned within its limits. One was owned by Mr. James Bowman, and three-a man, his wife and daughter-by Captain Stephen Maynard, who were afterwards sold to go south. Captain Maynard lived in the fine old house on the Northboro road now occupied by B. J. Stone. The heavy wall leading up to the house was built by one of these slaves.
"A familiar sight on the streets in the beginning of the century were old colored people, who had been slaves here or in other towns, among them one once owned by Sir Harry Frankland, at his mansion in Hopkinton (now Ashland)-old Dinah. She is remembered as a short stout woman carrying a cane, and in the season a bunch of wild flowers; but the greatest impression on the children was made by the three long straight marks on her face, where she was branded at the time of her capture in Africa."
With the abolition of slavery, a great many Africans remained with the families which had owned them, and their lives went on as if there had been no change in their status. Barre seems to have had a considerable number of slaves, for not only did some of them remain with their old masters and mistresses, but they established a little colony of their own, apart from the whites, in the old School District Number Ten. Their hamlet came to be known as Guinea Corner, and the name is heard even today.
In considering the presence of slavery in Massachusetts we must remem- ber that its beginning was a very long time ago, even before the founding of the Bay Colony, for Maverick, whom the Puritans in 1630 found living on
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Noddle Island in Boston Harbor, had with him two African slaves. The custom of exchanging prisoners had not been known until the preceding century, previous to which time, and into the seventeenth century, as the Scottish slaves prove, the only alternative for the prisoner of war was death or bondage. The spirit of freedom for all, which seems to have been indige- nous to New England, would have asserted itself in a practical way in rela- tion to slavery, had not the attitude of the Mother Country stood squarely in the way.
The Story of the Slave-Trade-"During the years from 1619 to the opening of the American Revolution the friends of the slave-trade and of slavery controlled the government and dictated the policy of England," wrote Henry Wilson in his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America." "Her kings and queens, lords and commons, judges and attorney-generals, gave to the African slave-traffic their undeviating support. Her merchants and manu- facturers clamored for its protection and extension. Her coffers were filled with gold bedewed with tears and stained with blood. 'For more than a cen- tury,' in the words of Horace Mann, 'did the madness of the traffic rage. During all those years the clock of eternity never counted out a minute that did not witness the cruel death, by treachery or violence, of some father or mother in Africa.'
"Under the encouragement of British legislation and the fostering smile of royalty, more than three hundred thousand African bondsmen were imported into the thirteen British colonies. The efforts of colonial legisla- tion-whether dictated by humanity, interest or fear-to check the traffic were defeated by the persistent policy of the British government. ‘Great Britain,' in the words of Bancroft, 'steadily rejecting every colonial restric- tion on the slave-trade, instructed the governors, on pain of removal, not to give even a temporary assent to such laws.' The planters of Virginia, alarmed at the rapid increase of slaves, as early as 1726 imposed a tax to check their importation, but 'the interfering interest of the African company obtained the repeal of that law.' South Carolina attempted restrictions upon the importation of slaves as late as 1760, for which she received the rebuke of the British authorities. The legislature of Pennsylvania, as early as 1712, passed an act to prevent the increase of slaves ; but that act was annulled by the crown.
"The legislature of Massachusetts, in 1771, and again in 1774, adopted measures for the abolition of the slave-trade; but they failed to receive the approval of the colonial governors. Queen Anne, who had reserved for her- self one-quarter of the stock of the Royal African Company, that gigantic monopolist of the slave-trade, charged it to furnish full supplies of slaves to
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the colonies of New York and New Jersey, and instructed the governors of those colonies to give due encouragement to that Company; and it was the testimony of Madison that the British government constantly checked the attempts of his native State (Virginia) 'to put a stop to this infernal traffic.' Up to the hour of the American Revolution, the government of England steadily resisted colonial restrictions on the slave-trade, and persisted in forc- ing this traffic, so gainful to her commercial and manufacturing interests, upon the colonies, 'which,' in the words of the Earl of Dartmouth in 1775, 'were not allowed to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so beneficial to the nation.' British avarice planted slavery in America. British legislation sanctioned and maintained it; British statesmen sustained and guarded it."
But, according to this great authority, the British Government and mer- chants were not alone responsible for the spread of slavery in the Colonies. "The inhabitants themselves were generally only too willing to profit by the enforced and unpaid toil." The Southern and Middle States were glad to receive large numbers of the black people up to a certain economic limit. "Nor did the rugged soil, or the still more rugged clime of New England save its colonies from the introduction of the system even there." Slavery, however, grew slowly. In 1680 it was stated by Governor Bradstreet that there were only about one hundred and twenty African slaves in the Colony of Massachusetts. In 1720, at the end of a hundred years from the settlement of Plymouth, there were estimated to be only about two thousand.
The Anti-Slavery Current-The New England mind, as we have stated, was always disturbed by the thought of human beings deprived of freedom. The spirit of emancipation seemed to expand among thinking people. It came to the surface first in the "Body of Liberties" presented to the General Court in 1641, which provided "There shall never be any Bond Slavery, Villinage, or Captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful Captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves, or ARE SOLD TO Us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God, established in Israel concerning such persons, doth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judges thereto by authority." But whether this act prohibited negro slavery has been the cause of much dispute. The words "or sold to us" were to be construed as countermanding the slave trade.
The Anti-Slavery undercurrent revealed itself in strange ways, and none stranger than when the slave-trade became tangled with the quite unforgiv- able offence of Sabbath-breaking. In 1646, a shipmaster, who was also a member of the Puritan Church, introduced into the Colony two slaves whom he himself had secured in an African slave-hunt. He might have "got away
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with it," had it not come to the knowledge of the authorities that the slave- hunt had been held on the Lord's Day. A memorial presented to the General Court set forth the triple charge of "murder, man-stealing and Sabbath- breaking." It brought forth an order, in which the members of the legisla- tive body "conceived themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear wit- ness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing," and which provided that the two slaves "should be sent to their native country, Guinea." And in November of the same year, the General Court enacted that "if any man stealeth a man, or mankind, he shall surely be put to death." There was already on the statute books a sufficiency of punishment for Sabbath-break- ing.
The power of the crown in Massachusetts ceased for all practical purposes in October, 1774. The only organized government until the following July lay in the Provincial Congress and the Committees of Correspondence, chosen by the towns and counties of the province. The subject of slavery was early agitated in these bodies, though they had no authority to act upon it. What they did, however, is an indication not to be mistaken of what was then the feeling of the community.
The slaves of Worcester and Bristol counties addressed a memorial to a convention of the Committees of Correspondence held in Worcester in June, 1775, asking for their freedom and the response, according to Lincoln's History of Worcester, was: "We abhor the enslaving of any of the human race; and whenever there shall be a door opened, or an opportunity present, for any thing to be done toward the emancipation of the negroes, we will use our influence and endeavor that such a thing may be brought about."
The attitude of the Massachusetts Government, when reorganized under the advice of the Continental Congress, was shown in 1776, in respect to several negroes who had been taken in an English prize-ship and brought into Salem to be sold. The General Court, informed of the facts, instantly put a stop to the sale, and accompanied its action by a resolution: "That the selling and enslaving the human species is a direct violation of the natural rights alike vested in them by their Creator, and utterly inconsistent with the avowed principles on which this and the other States have carried on their struggle for liberty." The result was that the rights of prisoners of war were extended to such negroes as might thereafter be taken from the enemy during the war.
Typical of the prevailing sentiment during the Revolution were the words of Colonel Timothy Bigelow of Worcester, commander of the Massachusetts Fifteenth of the Continental Line, that "while fighting for liberty, I would never be guilty of selling slaves."
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In 1777 several colored persons petitioned the Legislature praying that they might "be restored to the enjoyment of that freedom which is the natural right of man." The committee to which it was referred promptly reported a bill "to prevent the practice of holding persons in slavery," and declared that "the practice of holding Africans, and the children born of them, or any other person, in slavery is unjustifiable in a civil government at a time when they are asserting their natural rights to freedom."
It is significant of the time, that the Legislature hesitated to pass an eman- cipation act, for fear of offending the sister Colonies. Therefore it addressed a letter to the Continental Congress to ascertain its views as to the expediency of such action. Said this letter: "Convinced of the justice of the measure, we are restrained from passing it only from an apprehension that our breth- ren in the other colonies should conceive there was an impropriety in our determining on a question which may in its nature and operation be of exten- sive influence, without previously consulting your Honors. And we ask the attention of your Honors to this matter, that, if consistent with the union and harmony of the United States, we may follow the dictates of our own under- standing and feelings ; at the same time assuring your Honors that we have such a sacred regard to the union and harmony of the United States as to conceive ourselves under obligation to restrain from any measure that should have a tendency to injure the union which is the basis of our defence and hap- piness." But the Continental Congress, probably having more engrossing affairs on its hands, made no reply to this communication.
The first attempt to establish a constitution for Massachusetts failed because it contained no bill of rights, which the people demanded, and per- haps the most important reason for their attitude was their insistence that every human being should have an equal freedom. However that may have been, the Constitution adopted in 1780 had as the opening clause of its bill of rights : "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights."
Upon this clause was based the case under which, as Henry Wilson said, "Massachusetts, while yet the war was raging for national independence, and before that independence was recognized by the treaty of peace, became a free state, taking her place in the van." And the central figure in that case was Quork Walker, a twenty-one-year-old Barre slave, whose own freedom was involved with that of every enslaved negro in the Commonwealth.
The Case of Quork Walker-In 1754 James Caldwell of Barre bought in Rutland a negro man Mingo, twenty years old; a negro woman Dinah, nineteen, and their nine-months-old infant Quork. The price paid for the three was £ 108. Caldwell died in 1763, and in the settlement of his estate,
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Quork, as an item of personal property, was given the widow as a part of her share. She married Nathaniel Jenison of Barre in 1769 and died in 1774, whereupon Jenison assumed ownership of the slave, now a man of twenty- one.
In 1781, following the adoption of the Massachusetts Constitution, John Caldwell, brother of James, became interested in Quork, we will presume from a purely philanthropic motive. He approached the negro and informed him that he was no longer a slave, but a freeman. Quork refused at first to leave his master, but finally yielded to Caldwell's promise to furnish a home and work for him, to pay him for his services, and to protect him. So Quork went to work on the Caldwell farm.
Jenison, missing his slave, suspected what had happened, and with several men at his back went to the Caldwell place, where he found Quork at work in the field, harrowing. He ordered the negro to return home, but he refused to obey. So Jenison, assisted by his companions, gave Quork a merciless beat- ing with a whip handle, and carried him away and caused him to be locked up. But two hours' later, Caldwell persuaded the negro's jailer to release him.
Quork, undoubtedly spurred on and backed by Caldwell, immediately brought suit against Jenison to recover damages for "an alleged assault and beating on the 30th of the previous April." The plaintiff maintained that he was a freeman and not a proper negro slave of Jenison. The defendant claimed that he was. The Grand Jury returned an indictment against Jenison for the assault. At the June term of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, Jenison was declared guilty and a fine of £8 and costs was imposed.
At the same sitting of the court, the civil action was tried, and the jury found for the negro, declaring that "he is a freeman and not the proper negro slave of the defendant," and assessed damages against Jenison of £60. The decision was appealed to the Superior Court, in which lay the final deci- sion on the interpretation of the State Constitution.
But the case upon which hinged the question of the freedom of the slaves was that brought by Jenison against John and Seth Caldwell asking dam- ages of £1,000, for "enticing away the same Quork, a negro man and servant of the plaintiff from his service, and rescuing him from out of the plaintiff's hands, and preventing him reclaiming and reducing his servant to his business and services, they knowing said negro to be the plaintiff's ser- vant." This case, likewise, was tried in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. The jury, in spite of its declaration that Quork was a free man, rendered a verdict in favor of Jenison and awarded him damages of £25. From this judgment the defendants Caldwell appealed. In September, 1781, the case came before the Superior Court for trial, and the finding of the Inferior
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Court was reversed. The Caldwells won the suit against them. The slaves of Massachusetts won their freedom.
Of particular interest in Worcester County is the make-up of the court which originally tried the cases in Worcester, and the distinguished group of lawyers who appeared for the litigants. The presiding judges were Chief Justice Moses Gill of Princeton, and the Associate Justices Samuel Baker of Berlin and Joseph Dorr of Auburn, then Ward, whence he had moved recently from Sutton. None of the judges was a lawyer. Judges Baker and Dorr were farmers. Judge Gill was a merchant. In 1794 he was elected Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, which office he held until 1799, when he succeeded to the Governorship upon the death of Governor Increase Sumner. His own death occurred on May 20, 1800, and for the only time under the Constitution Massachusetts was without a Governor. The execu- tive council officiated until May 30, when Caleb Strong, another important figure in the Quork Walker case, became Governor.
The lawyers who participated in the trials in both courts constituted a brilliant group. For Quork and Caldwell, which is to say, for the emancipa- tion of the slaves, were the first Levi Lincoln of Worcester and Caleb Strong of Northampton; for Jenison, Judge Sprague of Lancaster and William Stearns of Worcester.
Levi Lincoln was one of the great lawyers of his generation. Judge Emory Washburn characterized him as "one of the ablest lawyers in the state." At the time he was only thirty years old, yet he had appeared as counsel in some of the most important cases in several of the Massachusetts counties and in Maine. In 1800 he was elected to Congress, and the next year was appointed Attorney-General of the United States in the Cabinet of President Thomas Jefferson, between whom and Mr. Lincoln there existed a warm personal intimacy and a deep regard. He filled an unexpired term as Governor of Massachusetts, and in 181I was named as justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, which exalted office, however, he was compelled to refuse because of approaching blindness which finally became complete. His son and namesake, Governor Lincoln, rose to similar prominence.
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