''Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Nathaniel Jennison'' was a

court case Legal proceeding is an activity that seeks to invoke the power of a tribunal in order to enforce a law. Although the term may be defined more broadly or more narrowly as circumstances require, it has been noted that " e term ''legal proceedings'' ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

in 1783 that effectively abolished slavery in that state. It was the third in a series of cases which became known as the ''Quock Walker cases''. Nathaniel Jennison was arrested for beating Quock Walker and indicted on a criminal charge of

assault In the terminology of law, an assault is the act of causing physical harm or consent, unwanted physical contact to another person, or, in some legal definitions, the threat or attempt to do so. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may ...

and battery in September 1781. The trial before the

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously fun ...

was held in April 1783. Jennison's defense was that Walker was a runaway slave, but Walker countered that the

Massachusetts Constitution The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the fundamental governing document of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 individual states that make up the United States of America. It consists of a preamble, declaration ...

had made slavery illegal in 1780. Chief Justice

William Cushing William Cushing (March 1, 1732 – September 13, 1810) was an American lawyer who was one of the original five associate justices of the United States Supreme Court; confirmed by the United States Senate on September 26, 1789, he served until ...

accepted that argument and directed the jury that the issue of whether Walker had been freed or not was irrelevant because slavery was no longer constitutional. The jury convicted Jennison who was fined forty

shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currency, currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 1 ...

s. The case was not widely publicized but made it clear that the law would not defend the property rights of slaveowners. Because that law depended on the enslaved person to take action to gain their freedom by either appealing to the courts or running away, people without the knowledge or the means to act continued to be held as slaves for years after the ruling. Slavery (or the willingness to reveal its presence) declined, and during the 1790 census, no slaves were recorded in the state. However, it is understood that many former slaveowners reclassified their former slaves as still-legal "

indentured servants Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for a prepaid lump sum, as payment for some good or ser ...

." That allowed the former masters to be compliant with the law and to continue to take advantage of the labor of enslaved people, who might otherwise be unable to free themselves. Edward L. Bell, in his 2021 book, ''Persistence of Memories of Slavery and Emancipation in Historical Andover'', wrote:

The 'Mum Bett' and 'Quock Walker' cases were heard as jury trials with party-particular outcomes. The decisions of the Common Pleas courts and Supreme Judicial Court were unpublished and only existed in original manuscript form. In eighteenth-century legal circles, which depended on memory of judicial decisions and bench rulings to invoke case-made common law principles, the cases were soon forgotten. Practicing legal professionals in at least Berkshire and Worcester counties remembered the outcomes for a time, and advised their slave-owning clients of the futility of defending or appealing lawsuits for liberty in a changed legal landscape.Bell, Edward L. (2021). ''Persistence of Memories of Slavery and Emancipation in Historical Andover''. Boston: Shawsheen Press. p. 197. .

References

{{reflist Massachusetts state case law 1783 in case law 1783 in Massachusetts United States slavery case law Abolitionism in the United States Law articles needing an infobox African-American history of Massachusetts

See also

References