Tyrannicide

Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary South Carolina and Massachusetts

Emily Blanck, Paul Finkelman, Timothy Huebner

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780820347912
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Storia giuridica

Tyrannicide uses a captivating narrative to unpack the experiences of slavery and slave law in South Carolina and Massachusetts during the Revolutionary Era. In 1779, during the midst of the American Revolution, thirty-four South Carolina slaves escaped aboard a British privateer and survived several naval battles until the Massachusetts brig Tyrannicide led them to Massachusetts. Over the next four years, the slaves became the center of a legal dispute between the two states. The case affected slave law and highlighted the profound differences between how the "terrible institution" was practiced in the North and the South, in ways that would foreground issues eventually leading to the Civil War.

Emily Blanck uses the Tyrannicide affair and the slaves involved as a lens through which to view contrasting slaveholding cultures and ideas of African American democracy. Blanck's examination of the debate analyzes crucial questions: How could the colonies unify when they viewed one of America's foundational institutions in fundamentally different ways? How would fugitive slaves be handled legally and ethically? Blanck shows how the legal and political battles that resulted from the affair reveal much about revolutionary ideals and states' rights at a time when notions of the New Republic—and philosophies about the unity of American states—were being created.

CHAPTER ONE

Slavery, Rhetoric, and Reality before the War, 1764–1774

Mrs. Ann Pawley the wife of Percival Pawley was taken sick the 29th August 1773 and Dyed 4th Dec 1773 about 8 oclock in the morning, was married almost 70 years with in 25 Days to Percival Pawley.

John Pawley the son of Percival Pawley was born April 8 1776 about 11 oclock at night.

—Pawley family Bible

IN THE DECADE BEFORE the American Revolution, life went on as normal for the white members of the Pawley plantations, even as many American colonists began to reenvision their relationship to England. Percival Pawley Jr. lost his mother but soon thereafter gained a son. Historical documents do not divulge whether any of the Pawley, Todd, Lewis, or Vereen families were actively engaged in the rebellion that was brewing against Britain. More than likely, they talked about the affairs of the day, but daily lives probably changed very little. They commanded their plantations, visited the cities, and traded their goods, seeking to make their own families happier and wealthier.

Stability was fragile, however. Both the black and white members of plantations would soon find themselves at the center of a transforming storm. Between 1764 and 1774, balking at the growing demands of the British, American colonists grasped for ways to assert their will and desires, while Britain sought to shape them into more responsible (and tax contributing) members of the empire. The American colonists would draw from their own experiences for a key metaphor to explain their perceived oppression: slavery. This metaphor was potent for two reasons. First, the American colonists were familiar with the oppressive chattel slave labor on which their economies depended. Second, the word helped give depth and meaning to a core value of Anglo-American identity: liberty. In associating a loss of liberty with slavery, the American colonists gave liberty a clear and emotional meaning that resonated far more than any abstract or philosophical definition of the word.

The centrality of liberty in a nation of slaveholders created intractable tensions, even in colonies that depended little on slave labor. In 1765, Peter Oliver, chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court, presided over the freedom suit Slew v. Whipple.¹ After defense lawyer Jeremiah Gridley asserted that the highest law was that which protected property, Oliver retorted, “This is a Contest between Liberty and Property—both of great Consequence, but Liberty of most importance of the two.” This remarkable exchange took place in a courtroom in an Anglo-American society in the early stages of a revolution about individual rights. Over the course of the eighteenth century in England and America, the idea of freedom as a core right of human beings in civil societies had gained enormous power. Many eighteenth-century citizens had begun to declare that governments must protect their citizens’ freedoms and to insist that those that did not were illegitimate.

However, these men still generally embraced a Lockean view that tied freedom to the ownership of property, making Oliver’s statement truly remarkable. Oliver issued this statement in a milieu in which property could be human beings. The widespread existence of slavery in the Anglo-American world challenged Revolutionary ideas of freedom. Slavery challenged white colonists not so much because of its consistency with the discourse of liberty as because the slaves themselves usurped the language of freedom to demand emancipation. The British, the white Americans in Massachusetts and South Carolina, and free and enslaved blacks in both colonies were beginning a vigorous and dynamic dialogue over the meaning of freedom and slavery in America.

For the past forty years, historians have debated the significance of the rhetoric of slavery for the pre-Revolutionary generation. Some scholars attribute the post-Revolutionary emancipations throughout the North to the “contagion of liberty.” They argue that the colonists could not help but question slavery within their communities when they themselves had complained of being enslaved. Others have suggested that this contagion was weak and that slavery did not really wane during this era but only was abolished in areas that were nominally invested in slavery. In fact, they further observe, the new nation’s Constitution recognized and protected slavery. Scholars seeking to understand how the Revolutionary generation justified its rebellion and still developed complex and differing ideas of freedom have taken up this debate. Until recently, the voices of slaves themselves have been absent in the debate. Scholars now recognize that slaves engaged in the dialogue with whites and pressed the Revolutionary generation to hold true to its ideals. This chapter explores the development of the debate between freedom and slavery in two very different colonies, South Carolina and Massachusetts.²

The debate in the colonies in the eighteenth century over the meaning of freedom and slavery provides the immediate context for responses to the Tyrannicide affair. The British who captured the slaves, the South Carolinians who lost their slaves, the officials in Massachusetts who received the slaves, and the slaves themselves all made choices that cannot be understood without locating them in the context of the larger debate about liberty and slavery. Societal dialogues are rarely simply organized, and this high-stakes discussion was no exception. For all these stakeholders, freedom and slavery had a nexus of meanings, many of which contradicted one another. Each group’s ideas about these concepts emerged from experiences with the others: British leaders with Massachusetts’ Patriots, slaves with white South Carolinian Patriots, white South Carolinians with white citizens of Massachusetts, and so on. This web of relationships brought individuals and groups vested in pressing their own definitions of slavery and freedom into contact and conflict. The rhetoric of slavery thus became interlocked with the reality of events. In a cycle that fed on itself, the reality influenced the rhetoric, and the rhetoric then pressed and shaped the experiences and actions of the Revolutionary generation.³

The realities of slavery were radically different in both places, but the language was the same. South Carolinian and Massachusetts revolutionaries would both use slavery as a key rhetorical tool, but slavery meant different things to each. For Britain, the reality of slavery in South Carolina was a military tool to use. The reality of slavery would also shape the rhetoric of slavery and the course of the war.

Colonial Slavery

History of Slavery in Massachusetts

It was not a coincidence that a justice from Massachusetts concluded that liberty was more important than property. His conclusion was rooted deeply in the history of slavery in the colony. Undoubtedly, Massachusetts’ inhabitants valued property greatly and tied their own freedom to their ability to freely own, buy, and sell property. Nonetheless, the history of and ideas about slavery in the colony provided a framework wherein individuals could see the humanity in their human property. To begin with, labor relationships in Massachusetts spanned a very broad spectrum of bonded and forced labor. Massachusetts depended on not only slaves but also indentured servants and enslaved Native Americans, who had a slightly different status than black slaves did. This variety provided the people of Massachusetts with a subtler picture of forced labor. And a lack of reliance on slavery paired with an evolving ideology of citizenship in Massachusetts gave slaves enough power to press for their freedom when the right moment arose.⁴

Slavery began in New England during the first years of settlement in Massachusetts, and thus, the Puritans learned how to be slave owners immediately on arrival. As white New Englanders conquered their new settlements, they enslaved Native American populations both to control them and to draw on them for labor. Although John Winthrop did not immediately see Indians as slaves, it dawned on him quickly that they could be. Winthrop recorded requests for Native American slaves both locally and abroad in Bermuda. Wars with the Narragansett and Pequot tribes garnered large numbers of slaves. The trading of Indian slaves abroad brought African slaves to Massachusetts shores. In 1645, Emanuel Downing, John Winthrop’s brother-in-law and a barrister, welcomed a trade of Pequot slaves for African slaves. However, the enslavement of American Indians had a different tenor than the enslavement of Africans. The indigenous slaves represented an enemy, a conquered people, and a grave threat to their society. African slaves represented a trade transaction, laborers without strings attached. Moreover, Indian slaves were part of peace negotiations and control of the region.⁵ They served as collateral with which to negotiate with Native leaders. Further, colonists could expel troublesome Native slaves out of the colony, or they could just control them as slave property.

Despite this early foray into slavery, an opposition ideology appeared in the first slave law written in the Americas, only two years after African slaves set foot in the colony. This law, appearing in Massachusetts’ first legal code, the 1641 Body of Liberties, was unique in its proscription. Rather than legalizing slavery outright, it outlawed slavery among the Puritans. However, the exceptions of strangers (foreigners who lacked protection from the king) and war prisoners gave an opening to enslave other human beings. The exception in the case of war prisoners gave the colonists direct permission to enslave Indians captured in war, such as in the Pequot war they had just commenced. Conveniently, the slave trade had already begun to spread strangers throughout the Atlantic world. The law, however, also protected slaves, offering them “the Libertyes and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israell.” In the Bible, God instructs Moses not to enslave his fellow Israelites, inviting him instead to enslave “from among the nations around you.” This Massachusetts law establishing slavery demonstrates that its version of the institution drew from a particular moral and religious place. In time, this biblical origin would provide Massachusetts’ slaves with leverage over their masters, as ideas of citizenship evolved in the colony.⁶

The numbers of slaves remained small in Massachusetts, making it easier to keep these strangers under control without a harsh slave code, but most Puritans sought a homogeneous society that made any kind of stranger generally unwelcome. Puritan communitarianism depended on the maintenance of trust among the members of the community. Puritans’ efforts to expunge untrustworthy members with white skin were legendary. Men and women from other cultures with different skin tones posed a more complicated dilemma. The cultural differences of Africans and Native Americans automatically made them undesirable additions to the closed Puritan societies.⁷

The Puritan aversion to difference manifested itself differently in the case of Indians as opposed to Africans. The Puritans perceived the local Native Americans as dangerous military enemies and a major competitor for land. This perception of Native Americans as dangerous led to their near eradication. Indian slaves remained a constant throughout the colonial period, but their identity frequently merged with the black population. In the Puritan imagination, Africans embodied a spiritual threat. Tituba, for instance, a West Indian African, became an important focus during the Salem witch trials. Many Puritan leaders saw her blackness as a sign of the devil. But, despite the spiritual threat, Massachusetts reluctantly became a society with slaves, enslaving those Africans that entered their society. During the seventeenth century, Africans mostly presented Massachusetts with a convenient solution to colonists’ problems with local aggressive Native groups. Edward Randolph reported in 1676 that only 200 Indian slaves lived in Massachusetts, and Governor Bradstreet estimated in 1680 that even fewer did, only about 120.⁸

As King Philip’s War drew to an end in 1678, Massachusetts began changing the way it approached the enslavement of Native Americans. At first, the war brought in a huge number of slaves. Hoping to socialize Indian children, Plymouth’s council of war forced them to apprentice in white families. The council sold hundreds more Indians to Spain, Jamaica, and the Wine Islands. Within a decade after the war, Massachusetts officials outlawed the enslavement of Native Americans.

Three factors contributed to this first emancipation. Fears of Native infiltration into Massachusetts towns, the strategic need for peaceful relations with northern New England and Canadian Indians, and the decimation of local tribal power meant that for most New Englanders, Native Americans were better forgotten than enlisted into service. After Rhode Island banned the enslavement of Native Americans in 1652, many Massachusetts towns did so independently, and, other than in times of war, Massachusetts frowned on enslaving Native Americans and tried to prevent it through their law against man stealing.⁹

Yet Massachusetts’ officials were not quite ready to accept Indians into their society and thus created a complex system of involuntary labor in Massachusetts that gave rise to a harsh legal system that sanctioned enslaving Native Americans who ran into any trouble. Judicial indentures became a common experience for Indians. The penalties for Native Americans differed from those for whites, enslavement serving as a punishment for several crimes, especially for debt. Why did officials do this? They had three reasons: to maintain laborers, to keep Indians who lived within their midst under control, and to protect themselves from what they perceived as dependent people. Puritan leaders also controlled the less threatening Indians, mostly women and children, after King Philip’s War, by forcing them into enclaves that were overseen by white officials. In 1746, they would appoint guardians to represent these Indians legally, ensuring that they would remain dependent members of society. In addition, strict debt laws that were enacted after King Philip’s War ensnared hundreds into indentures that became hard to escape. Last, laws were enacted that criminalized Native Americans’ own cultural practices, and just as with failure to repay debts, they could be punished for engaging in their cultural practices with enslavement.¹⁰

As Massachusetts Puritans created a thriving commercial and shipping center, their ships began to partake directly in the Atlantic slave trade, bringing more slaves to their shores. By 1700, the reported number of slaves in the colony was 400. By 1720, it had risen to 2,000, and by 1735, to 2,600. When the colony first took an official count of black slaves in 1754, the census counted 4,489, amounting to 2.3 percent of the total population, and the next census, in 1764–1765, it reported 5,779, which equaled 2.5 percent of the total population.¹¹

The rapid rise in the number of slaves at the dawn of the eighteenth century caused Massachusetts leaders to take action. Spiritually, slavery proved an obstacle for the local ministers, as some congregants began to question whether a Christian should own another Christian. In 1693, Cotton Mather took on the challenge of Christianizing the heathen population without ending enslavement. In his 1701 pamphlet The Negro Christianized, Mather assured nervous masters that conversion did not free the slave. He proposed a law that any slave who completed baptism could not be freed just because he or she had received that rite. Mather’s vision of slavery in his pamphlet, consistent with the Hebraic model, idealized the relationship between master and enslaved, representing it as mirroring the father-child relationship in a family. Mather promised that if owners mistreated their slaves “the Sword of Justice” would sweep through the colony.¹²

In 1701, Boston, which had the largest slave population in the colony, began passing municipal law...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Forging an American Slave Law
• Chapter 1 Slavery, Rhetoric, and Reality before the War, 1764–1774
• Chapter 2 Slavery and the Start of the Revolution, 1775–1779
• Chapter 3 The Tyrannicide Affair Begins, 1779–1782
• Chapter 4 Diverging Slave Law in the New Nation, 1783–1787
• Epilogue Fugitive Slaves in the Constitutional Convention
• Notes
• Index