Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1866-04-25
COLUMBUS, April 24, 1866.
[From the Cleveland Herald (Republcan), April %
Slavery in N1assiI hIIseIIs.

A work has Just been given to the public
by the Librarian of the New York Hstori-
cal Society. proving from existing docu-
ments that Massachusetts, WAS the Origina-
tor and most strenuous defender of Ameri-
can slavery. The Ne,o York Journal OF
COn1mercesays in reviewing the book:H
That Massachusetts was the originator
and defender of American slavery as a
divine institution was well known. But it
has never befOre,been so plain as now That
having established sldUery by statute ldi0 be-
fore any other American colony, she up
held it even after her Constitution OF 1880,
and the strange truth sproven indisputably
by Mr. Moore, that slavery was never a6ol-
ishcd by law in that State, but only ceased
by the dying oil, one bo one. of the old
slaves, the failure of the people to supply
their es(probably for economic reasons),
and the consequent extinction of the insti-
tuition. 1t was not till 1866 by the COnsti-
tutional amendment, that slavery was legal
ly abolished in Massachusetts. n.
The records produced in this volume
show that the public sentiment Of Massa-
chusetts was always in favor of slavery, and
that no attempt to legislate against it was
successful. That this was so, no one who
knows the Puritan history will be surprised
to learn. The whole Puritan doctrine of
ID
rare pamphlet by Judge Satin, published
in Boston in l70l, and reproduced in full in
the appendix to the present volume. They
believed in slavery as an Institution OF God,
taught it in the pulpit and the family, justi-
fled it by Scripture and the Westminster
CatechiSm, when that came, and the prac-
tics and law of Massachusetts, in her early
times, make it part of the very bone and
blood of a Massachusetts man to believe in
negro and Indian slavery, and to justify
the sending of ship-loads of slaves Tor sale
in foreign countries. Somewhere in the
Bernrudas to-day there may be descend
ants of King Philip, whose wife and son
the Puritans sold as slaves. Somewhere in
Africa, among the BedOuins who traverse
Sahara, there may be the American Indian
blood, flowing in the veins of the descend
ants of the Christian Indians, disciples of
Eliot, who were shipped as slaves by the
Puritans, and landed and left at Tanglers,
to become the prey of the barbarians.
We confess to astonishment at one fact
brought to light by Mr.. Moore. Somerset,
the slave in whose case Lord Mansfield
made his great decision, on which the
freedom of English soil has been based, it
now appears was a Massachusetts, slave
carried from Boston by his master. Ii was
then the slave of the New England Puri-
tan law that England freed. But this pro-
duced no effect on slavery in Massachu-
setts, and after the Constitution of 1850 in
that State, we find such advertisements as
this, in the Boston papers, giving very
clear proof that slavery was still alive:
From the Continental Journal. March l, l7sl.l
TO be SOLD, an extraordinary likely Ne
GRO wENCH, II years old; she can be war
ranted to be strong, healthy, and goodna-
tured; HAS no NOTION OF FREEDOM; has
been always used to farmers Kitchen, &c.