PSDs Slavery and the American Revolution PDF

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PSDs Slavery and the American Revolution...

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(Prince Hall, a former slave, and other African-Americans in the Boston area submit a petition of Emancipation to the Massachusetts legislature)

To the Honorable Counsel & House of Representatives for the State of Massachusetts Bay in General Court assembled, January 13, 1777:

The petition of A Great Number of Blackes detained in a State of slavery in the bowels of a free & Christian County Humbly sheweth that your Petitioners apprehend that they have in Common with all other men a Natural and Unalienable Right to that freedom which the Grant Parent of the Universe that Bestowed equally on all mankind and which they have Never forfeited by any Compact or agreement whatever but that were Unjustly Dragged by the hand of cruel Power and their Dearest friends and sum of them Even torn from the Embraces of their tender Parents from A populous Pleasant and Plentiful country and in violation of Laws of Nature and of Nations and in Defiance of all the tender feelings of humanity Brought here Either to Be sold like beasts of burden & Like them Condemned to Slavery for Life Among A People Professing the mild Religion of Jesus A people Not Insensible of the Secrets of Rational Being Nor without spirit to Resent the unjust endeavors of others to Reduce them to a state of Bondage and Subjugation your honors Need not to be informed that A Live of Slavery Like that of your petitioners Deprived of Every social privilege of Everything Requisite and render Life Tolerable is far worse that Nonexistance. In imitation of the Lawdable Example of the Good People of these States your petitioners have Long and Patiently waited the Event of petition after petition. By them presented tot the Legislative Body of this state and cannot but with Grief Reflect that their Success hath been but

too similar they Cannot but express their Astonishment that It have Never Bin Considered that Every Principle from which America has Acted in the Course of their unhappy Difficulties with Great Briton Pleads Stronger than A thousand arguments in favors of your petitioners they therfor humble Beseech your honours to give this petition its due weight and consideration & cause an act of the legislature to be past Whereby they may be Restored to the Enjoyments of that which is the Natural right of all men and their Children who were Born in this Land of Liberty may not be held as Slaves after they arrive at the age of twenty one years so may the Inhabitance of this States No longer chargeable with the inconstancy of acting themselves that part which they condemn and oppose in others Be prospered in their present Glorious struggle for Liberty and have those Blessings[secured] to them by Heaven, of which benevolent minds can not wish to deprive their fellow Men. And your Petitioners, as in Duty Bound shall ever pray.

Lancaster Hill Peter Bess Brister Slenten Prince Hall Jack Purpont his mark Nero Suneto his mark Newport Symner his mark Job Lock

2 Petition of an African slave [Belinda], to the legislature of Massachusetts.1

To the hounorable the senate and house of representatives, in general court assembled: The petition of Belinda, an African, Humbly shews, That seventy years have rolled away, since she, on the banks of the Rio de Valta,2 received her existence. The mountains, covered with spicy forests—vallies, loaded with the richest fruits spontaneously produced—joined to that happy temperature of air, which excludes excess, would have yielded her the most complete felicity, had not her mind received early impressions of the cruelty of men, whose faces were like the moon, and whose bows and arrows were like the thunder and lightning of the clouds. The idea of these, the most dreadful of all enemies, filled her infant slumber with horror, and her noon-tide moments with cruel apprehensions! But her affrighted imagination, in its most alarming extension, never represented distresses equal to what she has since really experienced: for before she had twelve years enjoyed the fragrance of her native groves, and ere she had realized that Europeans placed their happiness in the yellow dust,3 which she carelessly marked with her infant foot-steps—even when she, in a sacred grove, with each hand in that of a tender parent, was paying her devotion to the great Orisa, who made all things, and armed band of white men, driving many of her countrymen in chains, rushed into the hallowed shades! Could the tears, the sighs, the supplications, bursting from the tortured parental affection, have blunted the keen edge

1 From The American Museum, or Repository of Ancient and Modern Fugitive Pieces, Prose and Poetical. For June, 1787. Volume 1. Number 6. Philadelphia: Mathew Cary, 1787. Early American History and Culture Volume LXIV, Number 1 Web Supplement for William and Mary Quarterly Roy E. Finkenbine, Belinda’s Petition: Reparations for Slavery in Revolutionary Massachusetts 2 The Volta River flows through present-day Ghana, known in the eighteenth century as the Gold Coast 3 Yellow dust: gold. Belinda remembers the type of African paradise—fruitful, temperate, and where minerals precious to Europeans have no real value—often described in abolitionist literature.

of avarice, she might have been rescued from agony, which many of her country’s children have felt, but which none have ever described. In vain she lifted her supplication voice to an insulted father, and her guiltless hands to a dishonoured deity! She was ravished from the bosom of her country, from the arms of her friends, while the advanced age of her parents rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated them from her forever. Scenes which her imagination had never conceived of, a floating world, the sporting monsters of the deep, and the familiar meeting of billows and clouds, strove, but in vain, to divert her attention from three hundred Africans in chains, suffering the most excruciating torment; and some of them rejoicing that the pangs of death came like a balm to their wounds. Once more her eyes were blessed with a continent: but alas! how unlike the land where she received her being! Here all things appeared unpropitious. She learned to catch the ideas, marked by the sounds of language, only to know that her doom was slavery, from which death alone was to emancipate her. What did it avail her, that the walls of her lord were hung with splendor, and that the dust trodden under foot in her native country, crouded his gates with sordid worshippers! The laws rendered her incapable of receiving property: and though she was a free moral agent, accountable for her own actions, yet never had she a moment at her own disposal! Fifty years her faithful hands have been compelled to ignoble servitude for the benefit of an Isaac Royall,4 until, as if nations must be agitated, and the world convulsed, for the preservation of that freedom, which the Almighty Father intended for all the human race, the present war commenced. The terrors of men, armed in the cause of freedom, compelled her master to fly, and to breathe away his life in a land, where lawless dominion sits 4 Isaac Royall (1719?–1781) was one of the wealthiest and most prominent Loyalists in Massachusetts. He and his brother Jacob, both born in the West Indian colony of Antigua, were slave dealers as well as major slave owners in Massachusetts. Isaac Royall fled from Medford, Massachusetts, to Boston just days before the battle of Lexington in April 1775. After the battle, he sought refuge in England, where he died. Like many colonial soldiers, he had two military ranks, one in the colonial service, in which he was Brigadier-General of the Artillery Company of Boston, and the other in the Royal Army, in which he was a colonel. Significantly, in Belinda’s petition he is later called Colonel Royall, to emphasize his Loyalist position. After he fled, his property was declared forfeited and confiscated by the state, which did not sell the Royall estate until 1805.

enthroned, pouring blood and vengeance on all who dare to be free. The face of your petitioner is now marked with the furrows of time, and her frame feebly bending under the oppression of years, while she, by the laws of the land, is denied the enjoyment of one morsel of that immense wealth, a part whereof hath been accumulated by her own industry, and the whole augmented by her servitude. Wherefore, casting herself at the feet of your honours, as to a body of men, formed for the extirpation of vassalage, for the reward of virtue, and the just returns of honest industry— she prays that such allowance may be made her, out of the estate of colonel Royall, as will prevent her, and her more infirm daughter, from misery in the greatest extreme, and scatter comfort over the short and downward path of their lives: and she will ever pray. BELINDA. Boston, February, 1782. (538–40).4

3 To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth BY PH ILLIS WHEATLEY

Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: The northern clime beneath her genial ray, Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, While in thine hand with pleasure we behold

The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold. Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies

She shines supreme, while hated faction dies: Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd, Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd; Thus from the splendors of the morning light The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night. No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain, No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent's breast? Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd

That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due, And thee we ask thy favours to renew, Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before, To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore. May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give To all thy works, and thou for ever live Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name, But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane, May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain, And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God....