Cotton Mather and Slavery in Colonial Boston

“Lay no Cruel Commands upon Them nor Appoint them Too Hard Work… Let not your Servants have their Lives Embittered, their Health Impaired, their Bodies Macerated by your Tyranny”

Africans and Slavery in the Boston of Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall

As more and more Africans, most of them enslaved and other free people of color, lived and labored in Boston in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, how they were to be treated and what justifications could be found for enslaving them represented challenges for some Bostonians.In a brief work A Good Master Well Served, originally preached to his congregation and subsequently published, for example, Mather argued that human society is divinely ordered with everyone accountable to a master—whether in heaven or on earth. Masters and heads of households are, however, bound together in a series of mutual responsibilities, duties & rights. Among other things, masters owe their slaves work, food & clothing. He cautioned, “Masters, when any Servant comes to Live with you, the God of Heaven does betrust you with another Precious and Immortal Soul, a Soul to be Influenced, a Soul to be Governed, a Soul to be brought home unto the Lord,” and anyone failing to lead a servant or slave to salvation will be harshly judged in the world to come. Consistent with this responsibility, masters are instructed, “Send not your Servants upon the Devils Business; make not your Servant the Tools of Wickedness.” In assigning labor, “you must Lay no Cruel Commands upon them nor appoint them Too Hard Work” that produce “Cries and Groans, which God will hear in His Holy Habitation…Let not your Servants have their Lives Embittered, their Health Impaired, their Bodies Macerated by your Tyranny.” Masters or slave owners will suffer consequences of abuse, since the cries of the killed, crippled, maimed or abused servant rise up to “the Righteous God, the Judge of the Creepled Servant.” In this work, Mather also outlines biblical justifications for servants and slaves laboring for their masters as did Samuel Willard and Benjamin Wadsworth in their writings.

This presentation at the Massachusetts Historical Society deals with Cotton Mather and slavery in eighteenth-century Boston:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0elHJjc0U2OT3NoczdQLUhhOG8/view?usp=sharing
Also see Mather’s text, The Negro Christianized:
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context=etas

Whither Art Thou Gone, My Child…

Kidnapping Free Children of Color and African American Community in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in 1839

In the summer of 1839, a Palmer, Massachusetts man and his adult nephew visited overseers of the poor in towns of central Massachusetts to obtain a “colored boy” allegedly to work in a family store, be paid good wages and be permitted to attend school half-time. They also visited individual households of people of color repeating requests for a “colored boy.” At Lunenburg and at Worcester, they succeeded. The widowed mother of nine-year old Nahum Hazard of Lunenburg and the family of twelve year old Sidney Francis of Worcester thought the employment an opportunity for their sons. What would be been a standard personal arrangement for poorer children, regardless of ethnicity, to serve in white households, became a nightmare for the Hazard and Francis families and many of the region’s African Americans. Working in cooperation with a Virginia slave merchant, the Palmer men took both boys to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where they were found in a “slave pen” before they could be sold. Young Sidney Francis identified himself as an abducted Northern child: he knew his name and his parents’ names, he knew he was from Worcester, Massachusetts and he was able to read and write. Virginia abolitionists pursue the matter. Arrests are made. Virginia officials communicated with the Worcester postmaster. Delegations were sent south to retrieve both boys as well as bring back to the Commonwealth for trial the two Palmer men. An eventual Worcester trial resulted in prison terms.
For presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0elHJjc0U2OdGctR2w5S19IQ1U/view?usp=sharing

John Milton Earle & Massachusetts Indians of the 1860s

Should Massachusetts Indians be Citizens? The Earle Report

Until 1869, Massachusetts Natives were ‘wards of the Commonwealth”. Through a legislative Act of 1859, John Milton Earle, Worcester politician and newspaper publisher, was appointed to investigate the social condition of Massachusetts Indians and advance recommendations whether they should be placed on the same legal footing as other residents of the Commonwealth. Specifically, Earle was named Commissioner "to examine into the condition of all Indians and the descendants of Indians domiciled in this Commonwealth, and make report to the governor, for the information of the general court," dealing with four issues:
[a] "The number of all such persons, their place of abode, their distribution…"
[b] "The social and political condition of all such persons…"
[c] "The economic state of all such persons;" and,
[d] "All such facts in the personal or social condition of the Indians of the Commonwealth, as may enable the general court to judge whether they can, compatibly with their own good and that of the other inhabitants of the State, be placed immediately and completely, or only gradually and partially, on the same legal footing as the other inhabitants of the Commonwealth."

His response, often called the Earle Report is Mass. Senate Report #96 of 1861, or Report to the Governor and Council Concerning the Indians of the Commonwealth Under the Act of April 6, 1859 (Boston: William White, 1861) by John Milton Earle.

The actual document, submitted by Earle in 1861, consists of three sections: a 132 page report; a proposed act to enfranchise Bay State Indians; and an appendix of 78 pages, listing Native families, his so-called "census."
The Earle material is certainly note complete. He was concerned primarily with the so-called Plantation or Reservation Tribes of the 17th & 18th centuries for whom the Commonwealth accepted financial responsibility. As example, for that reason, he does not enumerate Natives of the Connecticut River Valley but Earle does list Indians of Southeastern Mass., Martha Vineyard, Cape Cod and the Nipmucs who lived along the Massachusetts/ Connecticut border in an important appendix enumerating 1,582 Native American men, women, and children living in Massachusetts or connected to Massachusetts Indian families at the time.

Here is the full, actual Earle Report of 1861 recommending that Bay State Indians be made citizens: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0elHJjc0U2ObWFIWGM5UDdSNGM/view?usp=sharing
Here is the Appendix, Earle Report, Listings of Individuals and “Tribes":
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0elHJjc0U2OWlFqbjU4YW9UNkE/view?usp=sharing