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