Event: Massachusetts House Petition for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts
Date: January 13, 1777
Petitioners: Prince Hall and seven other free and enslaved African Americans in Massachusetts
Summary
On January 13, 1777, eight free and enslaved African Americans submitted a petition to the Massachusetts Council and House of Representatives demanding the abolition of slavery in the commonwealth. The petition represented one of the earliest organized abolitionist appeals in American history, directly invoking the Revolutionary War’s foundational principles of human liberty and natural rights. The petitioners argued that slavery contradicted the ideals for which Americans were fighting against Britain, citing “every principle from which America has acted” as support for immediate freedom. They proposed that children born in Massachusetts to enslaved mothers be freed upon reaching age twenty-one. Although the Massachusetts House drafted legislation to ban slavery in response to the petition, the bill died in committee and failed to pass, yet the petition marked a crucial moment when enslaved and free African Americans demanded their own liberation in terms the Revolutionary generation could not easily dismiss.
The Petitioners
The eight signatories included Prince Hall, who would go on to found the African Lodge of the Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons (African American Freemasonry) and become one of the most prominent Black leaders of the Revolutionary era. The other seven signatories were Lancaster Hill, Peter Bess (also rendered Bestes), Brister Slenten, Jack Purpont, Nero Suneto, Newport Symner, and Job Lock — names that survive in several spelling variants across the manuscript copies. At least four of the petitioners were free; they made the appeal on behalf of all those still enslaved in the state, sharpening the moral contradiction they highlighted: men fighting for American liberty while denied it themselves.
Prince Hall’s participation was especially significant. Born around 1735 (date disputed), Hall had purchased his own freedom by 1770 and was a deeply respected community leader in Boston’s free Black community. The 1777 petition was part of his lifelong campaign for Black rights; he would submit additional petitions to the Massachusetts legislature in 1787 seeking equal educational opportunities for Black children.
Context: The Revolutionary Paradox
The 1777 petition occurred amid profound ideological tension. The American Revolution was fought under the banner of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and natural rights, yet slavery remained embedded in colonial law and practice. Enslaved African Americans had begun petitioning for freedom as early as 1773, but the 1777 petition came at a critical moment: the Declaration of Independence had been signed the previous year, and the Revolutionary War was in its third year. The petitioners seized on this ideological opening, directly confronting the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom while enslaving others.
Massachusetts in 1777 held approximately 5,000 enslaved people — a small fraction compared to southern colonies, but a significant population in a colony that styled itself the birthplace of American liberty. Boston, where the petition originated, had been the center of Revolutionary agitation since the Stamp Act controversy of 1765.
The Petition’s Arguments
The 1777 petitioners employed multiple rhetorical strategies:
Invoking Revolutionary Principles: The petition repeatedly cited the colonists’ own principles of liberty, arguing that Americans could not claim a moral right to freedom while denying it to others. The petitioners noted the “inconsistency of acting themselves the part which they condemn and oppose in others” — directly echoing the language of Revolutionary declarations and the arguments colonists had made against British tyranny. The petition opened with a direct appeal to the Massachusetts legislature: “Your petitioners apprehend that they have, in common with all other men, a natural and inalienable right to that freedom which the great Parent of the universe hath bestowed equally on all mankind.”
Military Service as Moral Claim: Implicitly and explicitly, the petitioners referenced the service of Black soldiers in the Continental Army. By 1777, several thousand African Americans — including many from Massachusetts — had served in Patriot militias and Continental regiments. This service created a direct moral argument: men who risked their lives for American liberty deserved to enjoy it.
Claiming Humanity and Worth: Unlike earlier petitions that emphasized obedience and deference to slaveholders, the 1777 petition asserted that petitioners were “a freeborn People” with inherent rights to freedom. This language challenged the legal fiction that enslavement was a condition compatible with human dignity.
Proposing Gradual Implementation: Rather than demanding immediate universal emancipation, which might have seemed radical, the petitioners proposed a pragmatic middle path: children born in Massachusetts to enslaved mothers would be freed upon reaching age twenty-one. This compromise acknowledged slaveholders’ economic interests while establishing a timeline for future freedom.
Earlier Massachusetts Petitions (1773–1776)
The 1777 petition was not the first such appeal. Beginning in 1773, African Americans in Massachusetts had submitted a series of freedom petitions to the colonial legislature:
- April 20, 1773: A group of enslaved men petitioned Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the General Court, arguing that they were “unjustly dragged” into slavery and deserved “the laws of the land” to apply equally. The legislature took no action.
- January 6, 1773 and May 25, 1774: Peter Bestes and others submitted additional petitions, explicitly connecting British tyranny to colonial slaveholding — anticipating the revolutionary logic that would dominate the 1777 petition.
- 1775: As the war began, African Americans petitioned the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, some already serving in Patriot militias at Lexington and Concord.
This pattern of escalating petitions, each building on the Revolutionary language of the moment, culminated in the comprehensive 1777 appeal.
Legislative Response and Failure
The Massachusetts House took the petition seriously enough to draft legislation prohibiting slavery. However, the bill encountered opposition from slaveholders, economic interests, and legislators who feared destabilizing wartime society, and it died in committee without reaching a vote. This legislative failure meant that Massachusetts, despite hosting the Revolution’s intellectual leadership and boasting some of the nation’s strongest abolitionist voices, did not formally abolish slavery until 1783, when the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, in the case of Commonwealth v. Jennison (the Quock Walker case), interpreted the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution as prohibiting the practice. Chief Justice William Cushing’s ruling declared that slavery was “inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution.”
Vermont’s Contrasting Success in 1777
While Massachusetts failed to act, the newly independent republic of Vermont moved decisively. The Vermont Constitution of July 8, 1777 — the first constitution written for an independent American state — explicitly banned adult slavery in its Declaration of Rights: “no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one years.” Vermont’s action stood in stark contrast to Massachusetts’s legislative failure and demonstrated that the ideological argument the Massachusetts petitioners had made was persuasive enough to produce real legislation.
Historical Significance
The 1777 petition represents a watershed moment in American abolitionist history. It was among the first attempts by enslaved and free African Americans to leverage Revolutionary ideology against slavery itself. By framing emancipation as a logical consequence of American principles, the petitioners exposed slavery as incompatible with the nation’s foundational values — a contradiction that would eventually contribute to the Civil War nearly a century later.
The petition also demonstrated that African Americans were active political participants in the Revolutionary era, making demands and appealing to the nation’s governing bodies rather than passively waiting for freedom. The failure of the Massachusetts petition did not silence such appeals; African Americans continued to petition legislatures throughout the 1780s and beyond, gradually building the abolitionist movement that would reshape American politics in the 19th century.
The document also represents a crucial challenge to the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, which left slavery entirely to the individual states — a structural compromise that reflected the same tension the Massachusetts petitioners had identified in 1777 between the ideals of liberty and the political reality of slaveholding states’ power.
Sources
- History is a Weapon: Four Petitions Against Slavery (1773–1777)
- National Humanities Center: Anti-Slavery Petitions
- Teaching American History: Massachusetts Antislavery Petition
- National Archives Foundation: The Long Road to Abolition
- PBS: Prince Hall and African American Freemasonry
- Massachusetts Historical Society: Slavery in Massachusetts