vention," said an orator, "I still hope that there will be found among the people at large virtue enough to trample under foot a form of government which thus saps the foundation of civil liberty and the rights of man."

On the submission of the constitution to the people, objec tions were made that it contained no declaration of rights; that it gave the governor and lieutenant-governor seats in the senate; that it disfranchised the free negro, a partiality warmly denounced through the press by the historian, Gordon. There was, moreover, dissatisfaction with the legislature for having assumed constituent powers without authority from the people. Boston, while it recommended a convention for framing a constitution, gave its vote unanimously against the work of the legislature; and the commonwealth rejected it by a vote of five to one.

The history of the world contained no record of a people which in the institution of its government moved with the caution which marked the next proceedings of Massachusetts. In February 1779, the legislature of the year asked their constituents whether they desired a new form of government; and, a large majority of the inhabitants of the towns voting in the affirmative, a convention of delegates was, in conformity to a law, elected for the sole purpose of forming a constitution. On the first day of September the convention thus chosen came together in the meeting-house of Cambridge. Their forefathers, in their zeal against the Roman superstition, had carried their reverence of the Bible even to idolatry; and some of them, like Luther, found in its letter a sanction for holding slaves. On the other hand, from principle and habit, they honored honest labor in all its forms. The inconsistencies of bondage with the principle of American independence lay in the thoughts of those who led public opinion; voices against it had come from Essex, from Worcester, from Boston, and from the western counties.

The first act of the constituent body was "the consideration of a declaration of rights;" and then they resolved unanimously "that the government to be framed by this convention for the people of Massachusetts Bay shall be a FREE REPUBLIC.” This resolution was deemed so important that liberty was re

served for the members of a committee who were absent to record their votes upon it; and on the next morning they declared "their full and free assent." A committee of thirty, composed for the commonwealth at large and for each county excepting the unrepresented counties of Dukes and Nantucket, was appointed to prepare a declaration of rights and the form of a constitution; but the house itself continued its free conversation on these subjects till sunset of the sixth of September. The next day it adjourned for more than seven weeks, that its committee might have time to transact the important business assigned them.

On the thirteenth of September the committee assembled at the new court-house in Boston. Among them were Bowdoin, who was president of the convention; Samuel Adams; John Lowell; Jonathan Jackson of Newburyport, who thought that the liberty which America achieved for itself should prevail without limitation as to color; Parsons, a young lawyer of the greatest promise, from Newburyport; and Strong of Northampton. John Adams had arrived opportunely from France, to which he did not return till November, and brought together in form and order the separate clauses of the constitution as they came from the convention. There are no means of distributing its parts to their several authors with certainty. No one was more determined for two branches of the legisla ture with a veto in the governor than John Adams. To him as much as to any other may be ascribed the complete separation of both branches from appointments to office. To Bowdoin was due the form of some of the sections which were most admired.

On the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of October the committee appointed to prepare a form of government reported a draft of a constitution; and on the next day the convention adopted the first article of a declaration of rights, which was couched almost in the words of the constitution of Virginia: "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness." The lawyers of Virginia had not considered this

declaration as of itself working the emancipation of negro slaves; the men of Massachusetts, in deciding how many of their old laws should remain in full force, excepted those parts which were "repugnant to the rights and liberties contained in this constitution."

As the delegates gave the closest attention to every line and word in the constitution, this clause did not come up for consideration till the last day of January 1780, in an adjourned session. Roads having been made for a time impassable by deep snows, there were still many absentees; and, though a quorum was present, the consideration of this question was from its importance deferred. For a month, therefore, other clauses were discussed and settled; and then in a full convention, after deliberation and amendment, this most momentous article of all was adopted. So calm and effortless was the act by which slavery fell away from Massachusetts. Its people wrought with the power of nature, without violence or toil, achieving its will through the might of overruling law. There is in us and around us a force tending to improvement, which we can work with, but can never destroy. The manner in which Massachusetts left slavery behind was the noblest that could have been devised. The inborn, inalienable right of man to freedom was written in the permanent constitution as the law of all coming legislation. The highest voice of morality speaks to the whole universe of moral being, and utters for all its one inflexible command. When by its all-persuasive force the men of Massachusetts abolished slavery, the decision had the character of primal justice and the seal of undying authority.

In an able address to their constituents, the delegates explained the grounds on which their decisions rested, and called on them in their several towns and plantations to judge "whether they had raised their superstructure upon the principles of a FREE COMMONWEALTH." Reassembling on the first Wednesday in June, they found that the male inhabitants of twenty-one years and upward had ratified the new constitution, and they chose the last Wednesday in October for the time on which it should take effect.

At the coming in of the twenty-fifth day of October 1780, Massachusetts became in truth a FREE COMMONWEALTH.

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Its

people shook slavery from its garments as something that had never belonged to it. The colored inhabitants, about six thousand in number, or one in seventy of the population, became fellow-citizens; and, if any of them possessed the required qualifications of age, residence, and property, their right to vote admitted of no question.

The law of Massachusetts which established slavery had not enumerated birth as one of its grounds, and many citizens of the state were accustomed to say that hereditary bondage had never existed in the land by law. The question whether the new constitution had surely abrogated slavery came before the courts within less than seven months after the constitution was established. In Barre, a town of Worcester county, Quaco Walker, in April 1781, left the service of Nathaniel Jennison, his old master, and found refuge and employment with John and Seth Caldwell. Jennison reclaimed him as a slave, beating him with a stick and imprisoning him for two hours. Two civil suits ensued. Quaco brought an action against Jennison, his former master, for assault; and Jennison, the master, brought an action against the Caldwells, who had given refuge and employment to the runaway, for depriving him of Quaco's services. The civil suits were brought, in June, before the county court of common pleas, whose members were selected from the justices of peace for the county, and so were the natural exponents of the feeling and judg ment of the land. Not one of them was a lawyer. Moses Gill, the chief justice, was brought up to be a shopkeeper, and had been one; Samuel Baker, one of the associates, was a farmer in Berlin; Joseph Dorr, the other, was a farmer in Mendon, and in the late state convention had served on the committee for framing the bill of rights. In the first case the verdict of the jury declared the negro to be a freeman, and assessed the damages which he had sustained at fifty pounds. An appeal to the supreme judicial court of the commonwealth was taken. In the suit of Jennison against the Caldwells, Jennison obtained a verdict in his favor, and a judgment for twenty-five pounds. The Caldwells appealed to the supreme judicial court, which was to hold a term at Worcester in the following September. The judges

of the supreme court, who were present at Worcester in September 1781, and heard the appeal of the Caldwells, were James Sullivan, Nathaniel Peaslee Sargeant, and David Sewall, every one of whom had been members of the convention which framed the constitution of Massachusetts; and Sullivan, who was a man of superior ability and character, and Sewall, had been on the committee which framed the declaration of rights. The Caldwells had engaged for their counsel Caleb Strong of Northampton and Levi Lincoln of Worcester, of whom both had been members of the state convention, and Strong had been one of the committee for framing the bill of rights. They argued that Jennison could have no claim to the labor of Quaco Walker, because by the new constitution he was certainly a free man, owing compulsory labor to no one; that laws of the state which derogate from the rights recognised by the common law are to be strictly construed; and that a law upholding slavery is contrary to the constitution of Massachusetts as well as to the laws of nature.* The decision of the court of common pleas was reversed by the supreme judicial court, and the reversal was founded on the clause of the constitution that "all men are born free and equal." This was the first action involving the right of the master which came before the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts after the establishment of the constitution, and the judges declared, as their successors have uniformly reaffirmed, that, by virtue of the first article of the declaration of rights, slavery in Massachusetts became extinct.

But another danger opened upon the would-be slave-holder at this session of the supreme court in September 1781; on the presentment of the grand jury of the county of Worcester, Jennison was indicted for beating and imprisoning Quaco Walker against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth. Jennison, in June 1782, laid his griefs before the legislature of Massachusetts. He received little comfort at their hands, for the first principle on which the house of representatives, in its later session, ordered a bill to be brought in for the relief of the old slave-holders was a declaration that "there never were legal slaves in this government." A bill on that principle, and

* Lincoln's brief in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings for May 1857, p. 198.