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10
“ALL MEN ARE BORN
FREE AND EQUAL”
9
●
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.)
MASSACHUSETTS.
“This is to
inform you that Hannah Lilly, a
poor person belonging to the town
of Salisbury. . .” * “This is to inform
you that there is a Black Man by
the name of Newport Wiggins. . .”
Two manuscript documents on one
piece of small 8vo paper, alluding to the
welfare and upkeep of the District’s
poor; one white, the other black.
Signed by three of the District’s
Selectmen.
Newburyport, MA, 30 January 1792
[800/1,200]
Massachusetts effectively put an end to slav-
ery in 1781 when a slave named Quock
Walker sued his master for his freedom.
From that point onward blacks were for the
most part, treated as citizens of the State.
The Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ruled that Walker was free because of
the state’s “Declaration of Rights,” drawn from the Bill of Rights (within the state’s Constitution),
that “all men are born free and equal” and the Commonwealth then brought suit against Walker’s
owner Mr. Jennison for wrongful imprisonment.