Posted on 08/23/2025 4:28:03 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
I’m sure there were. There were also slaves as well as free blacks who were not freeholders. Freeholder designated to the owner of real estate and real property, not the owner of slaves.
“. . . once the Massachusetts constitution effectively eliminated laws enforcing slavery, it immediately ceased to exist in Massachusetts.”
Is it true that some Massachusetts slave owners converted their slaves into indentured servants?
I have read that actually happened. I hope it is not true.
Not very much. That was more common in other states. Most sources agree that indentured servitude in Massachusetts essentially ended with slavery.
A former master might have expected under age slaves to continue as “indentured servants” until the age of 21, in the same way that children weren’t fully independent until that age. Some unscrupulous ex-masters may have forced former slaves to submit to indenture agreements when they really didn’t want to or need to. I don’t know if such agreements stood up in court.
Indentured servitude was more common in states where gradual emancipation had been adopted. Those born after a certain date were freed, and those born before that date were expected to continue as slaves in all but name. That was a less common practice in states where emancipation happened immediately, like Massachusetts.
Ex-masters had ex-slaves who might continue on as workers or servants, paid or unpaid. The former masters might arrange a business deal with other employers and “indenture” their workers to the other business for a period of time, but that isn’t what “indentured servants” usually meant.
Thanks
jeffersondem: "Was it you that argued Justice Taney's brilliant opinion in the Dred Scott case was an important antislavery judicial ruling?"
I thought that might pull your chain. 😉
Crazy Roger Taney was out of his fricken' mind, a raging lunatic in judicial robes.
But, if you are looking at cause and effect, Crazy Roger's racist screeds had the effect of lighting a fire under the Northern Republican anti-slavery movement, and, in that sense, ironically, drove the country towards abolition.
By contrast, Corwin was less ironical and more intentional -- Corwin's purpose was to help hold the country together, especially Southern Border States, long enough to defeat rebellion.
With increasing Republican majorities in Northern states, Corwin had zero chance of ratification, but it still served its purpose in helping unite the country, long enough to destroy both rebellion and the slavery on which it was based.
Right, and while there's no evidence that VP John Adams recommended Cushing for Pres. Washington's Supreme Court, there can be no doubt that Adams supported Cushing's appointment.
People today forget that all of our major Founders opposed slavery in theory and wanted to see it abolished gradually wherever possible, including Southerners like Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Patrick Henry.
Yes, by 1780 there were freedmen who were also freeholders in Massachusetts.
For one thing, thousands of Massachusetts slaves and freedmen served in George Washington's Revolutionary War Continental Army, they were paid the same wages as white soldiers, were promised freedom after the war and so returned home with money and land grants enough to make them freeholders according to Massachusetts law.
Some could & did vote.
They could also use the courts to, for example, sue for freedom, and at least in theory, could sit on juries.
Comes now Brother ProgressingAmerica to exempt from opprobrium certain slave owners and traders.
And what do Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, and John Jay have in common, other than that gratuitous exemption?
For one thing they were all from, what became known as Union States that “fought to free the slaves.”
And we know what that means: slave owners from northern and Union states were the good kind of slave owners that practiced good slavery.
Contrast that with what we have learned from the “Won Cause Myths.” From the Myths we know slave owners in the South were bad slave owners that practiced the bad kind of slavery.
Yes, that Thomas Jefferson. Add a plaque of apology to his monument or, better yet, take it down entirely.
From the “Won Cause Myths” we know bad slave owners in the South would borrow large sums of money to purchase agricultural workers and then immediately starve them to death or kill them outright for sport.
Another learning from “Won Cause Myths” - documented elsewhere - is that slave owners in the Union slave state of Delaware fought slave owners in the Confederate state of Florida so that Delaware slave owners could free their own slaves.
And slave owners in the Union slave state of Maryland fought the slave owners in the Confederate state of Alabama so that Maryland slave owners could free their own slaves.
And that slave owners in the Union slave state of Kentucky . . . and so forth and so on.
“By the time of the Constitutions ratification five states, obviously northern, had abolished slavery.”
That is an interesting comment.
To which it is important to note: at ratification 13 of the original 13 slave states voted to enshrine slavery into the United States Constitution.
Someone a lot smarter than me said slavery was the corner stone of the constitution.
You’re right about him being a lot smarter than you, but he wasn’t talking about the US Constitution. It was Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens talking about the Confederate States of America. Here’s where he talks about the cornerstone.
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. ,Hummmm Cornerstone of the Confederacy??? Errors of past generations??? Sounds like he doesn’t much agree with you.
Just curious, didn’t indentured servitude live on and was a thing while debtors prisons were around?
Debtors prisons were abolished in the late 1820s I think. That was the death knell for indentured servants if I recall correctly.
I am more than happy to refer to John Newton as a slave trading abolitionist. In consistency with my earlier comments.
Benjamin Franklin the slave owning abolitionist.
John Jay the slave owning abolitionist.
John Dickinson the slave owning abolitionist. I think I said others too and I'd be happy to say it again.
To me, it's quite comforting to get these facts right. But even moreso, to be consistent about these things.
I'm asking. I'm asking you. Why does John Newton singularly deserve any exception? This is you guys's rule. I didn't create this. You said Franklin can't be an abolitionist as a slave owner. Ok, well then its impossible for John Newton to be an abolitionist.
You guys need to clarify your rule. This was your rule. Why are Americans so filthy in all of yours' views? I know you won't state it publicly and that's fine but you should expect that when people notice your hypocrisy they point it out or otherwise ask for clarification.
As for the rest of your post, I'm going to borrow a phrase from my good friend woodpusher.
I have no idea why you keep yammering about the civil war, other than as some absurd diversion.
“You’re right about him being a lot smarter than you, but he wasn’t talking about the US Constitution. It was Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens talking about the Confederate States of America. Here’s where he talks about the cornerstone . . .”
I am aware of Vice President Alexander Stevens’ reference - we are constantly reminded - about cornerstone of the CSA Constitution.
That is not what I was referencing. I seem to remember a northern swell that, prior to the creation of the “Won Cause Myths”, wrote that slavery was the corner stone of the United States Constitution.
I may have learned of the statement in a backwoods school; it is certainly hard to find the citation in a casual search of the internet.
Do you know what I am talking about (or, about which I am talking?)?
That is a complicated question that I can’t begin to answer, especially on a Saturday night. Congress abolished imprisonment for debt on the federal level in 1833. In the decades before and after that, many states did the same. The passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War did much to do away with indentured servitude. But still, “debt peonage” became an institution in some states after that. I believe the Supreme Court finally banned the practice in 1983, 150 years after Congress moved in that direction.
I am glad to hear Massachusetts’ people and politicians were eager to seize the moral high ground in 1783 because, frankly, I had doubts having read of their infamous history enslaving and exporting indigenous people, massacring the Pequots, and participating in the Atlantic slave trade.
As late as 1854 Henry David Thoreau expressed a blistering low opinion of Massachusetts morality because the state, in his opinion, was playing nice with slavery.
Said he: “Show me a free state, and a court truly of justice, and I will fight for them, if need be; but show me Massachusetts, and I refuse her my allegiance, and express contempt for her courts.”
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Slavery_Massachusetts.html
I'm sure somewhere in you Lost Cause myths you imagined that but I sure have never seen it and I have studied the Civil War era far more than you have.
The US Constitution while recognizing that slavery existed decidedly did not like it and only agreed to allow it in order to reach a unanimous agreement.
Your post 196 struck here like a Tomahawk missile; it blew me out of my chair and across the room - all the way to the filing cabinet.
It was there I found what I was looking for: Johnson v Thompkins. It was federal judge Henry Baldwin, the Connecticut born jurist, that declared in the case that “the foundations of the government are based on the rights of property in slaves” and “the whole structure must fall by disturbing the corner stones.”
No doubt that prompted Alexander Stephens decades later to troll his foreign adversaries with the “corner stone” reference. To my knowledge, Judge Baldwin's statement was never overruled.
You claim to have never heard it said that slavery was the corner stone of the U.S. Constitution. I believe you.
How could you know about Judge Baldwin's declaration? It is not part of the “Won Cause Myths.” You would be shrewd to continue to say you know nothing about the matter and to continue to broadcast that you know “far more” than others you have never met.
I’m over the black race
And homosexuals
Slave owning or prior slave owning founders together contributed more to our current freedoms than the few so called abolitionist founders which is a stretch in itself
Do give it up
This national review bash southerners to deflect bullshit honestly
Paging whiskey papa and ditto
Two turds
The evidence i've found so far says "very unlikely."
Freeholder designated to the owner of real estate and real property, not the owner of slaves.
Yes, I know. I've always known that. Were you thinking that I thought it meant someone who holds slaves? If you thought that, your response makes more sense, but you were absolutely wrong in your assumption.
My point in mentioning free holder was to illustrate *WHO* the Massachusetts constitution of 1780 was referring to when they said "All men are born free and equal."
They were referring to their citizenry, and *NOT* slaves.
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