1. Origins
Boston, a slave who belonged to James Gardner and who was on his deathbed in 1761, accused Quaco, another slave, of poisoning him a month earlier. Although Boston later died, William Stoddard, the justice assigned to investigate the matter, believed Bostonâs allegation alone was not enough to convict Quaco. The judge decided to dig deeper into Quacoâs past, and upon further investigation, he learned Quaco was from the Dutch colony of Suriname on the northern coast of South America. A plantation colony specializing in sugar, coffee, cocoa, and cotton production and heavily dependent on slave labor, Suriname was a regular trading partner with the New England colonies. Boston merchants sold dried fish, agricultural products, and manufactured goods for molasses and other commodities. Occasionally, as the case of Quaco demonstrates, merchants purchased a few slaves in the Dutch colony and brought them back to Boston to sell. Stoddard, aware of this trade, approached a ship captain, Duncan Ingraham, who knew Quacoâs Surinamese master. According to Ingraham, Quacoâs former master, a Mr. Felix, sold the slave to Captain John Fraiser of Boston, and Ingraham ânever heard that said Quaco was confined for poisoning or any other crime at Suriname to Occasion his being sent off.â Quaco was a good slave, according to Ingraham, but another witness did not share Ingrahamâs optimistic conclusion.1
On 19 September 1761, shortly after Bostonâs death, Stoddard summoned Arnold Wellsâs slave named Boar, whose name was possibly a corruption of the Dutch boer, meaning âfarmer.â Like Quaco, Boar was from Suriname; he remembered Quaco from his time there and even had a family connection. According to Boar, he knew the accused poisoner because his mother and Quaco were imprisoned together âon account of poison.â While Boarâs mother was executed for the crime, once Boar arrived in Boston, he often heard Quaco say he was only âsent awayâ for the crime. Unfortunately, we do not know the outcome of Stoddardâs investigation or if Boarâs testimony was important in convicting Quaco. More importantly, however, Quaco had a past, one deeply embedded in Atlantic slavery that did not disappear when he arrived in Boston.
While Quacoâs past came back to haunt him in a deeply personal way, all of Bostonâs slaves carried both their own experiences and larger cultural values with them when they arrived in New England. To better understand the world of Bostonâs slaves, we need to analyze these origins, especially their relationship with slavery. Eighteenth-century slaves in Boston were the descendants of a small native-born black population that had been in New England since the 1630s; American-born creoles or Africans who had resided in the Americas for a long period of time; or native Africans mostly, but not exclusively, from West Africa, including the Senegambia region and the Gold Coast. Slavery was deeply entrenched in each of these places, meaning that all Afro-Bostonians had encountered and had experience with slavery as an institution. Although the slave system they came from could be very different from the one they entered, they nevertheless had experience with commodification and unfreedom, allowing them to find more effective ways to adapt to their new homeland.2
Black Bostonians also had prior experiences with other institutions, such as Islam in the case of Senegambian slaves, which helped slaves navigate white society in Boston. All of this accumulated cultural knowledge from New England, Africa, and the Caribbean came together as a result of Bostonâs involvement in the slave trade. By the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the townâs enslaved population was expanding and diverse. These slaves, equipped with knowledge of slavery and cultural traditions that allowed them to adapt to colonial conditions, had the flexibility and ability to integrate themselves into Euro-American society.
By examining the origins of Bostonâs slaves, we clearly see that the slave trade was an engine of Atlantic diaspora, shuffling enslaved populations to areas all around its littoral. Yet its significance was not simply about the movement of people to labor on distant shores but about the values, traditions, and knowledge those populations carried with them. Most important was the shared experience of slavery, as many slaves moved from one slave society to another. They accumulated knowledge on how to best navigate and contest enslavement and later employed that information once they arrived in Boston, eventually channeling their energies into acquiring concrete material gains and creating a space for themselves in Euro-American society.
The first group that composed Bostonâs eighteenth-century slave population was the relatively small group of AfroâNew Englanders that had been in the region since the 1630s. Descendants of African-born slaves who most likely spent some of their time in the Caribbean, this population hovered around one thousand people for all of New England during the seventeenth century.3 By 1700, about eight hundred of these people lived in Massachusetts, and it is safe to assume that two to three hundred lived in Boston, the colonyâs largest urban center and most diverse economy.4 Although few in number, black New Englanders were fixtures in the social fabric of the region and constituted one of many classes of the unfree, which included indentured servants, apprentices, and Indian slaves. Like their descendants in the eighteenth century, they created multiracial communities and learned to navigate local institutions. Nevertheless, the relatively low density of slaves meant they did not reproduce at the prodigious rates of their white contemporaries, and their population always had to be reinforced with new arrivals.
In regard to slavery, seventeenth-century New England was quite similar to other seventeenth-century mainland English colonies such as New York and Virginia. Even in the latter case, Virginia was a not a full-fledged slave society until the passage of the Slave Code of 1705.5 In Virginia, however, the slave code was not comprehensive and left many issues unresolved. About the only place where slavery had been organized in any systematic way was the Caribbean, where the sugar colony of Barbados passed an often-copied slave code in 1661.6 As the early eagerness to adopt a slave code suggests, Barbados and the other English West Indian colonies were the centers of slavery in the Anglophone world. Given the close economic and social relationship between New England merchants and Caribbean planters, seventeenth-century slavery in Boston and the rest of the region was an extension of this relationship. In the course of trade and other forms of contact, New England and the West Indies became âone economic region,â and a crucial link between the two âinvolved slave labor.â7 This relationship made New England not only a Puritan errand in the wilderness but also a slave-owning society.
Of course, New Englandersâ close relationship with the West Indies did not force them to enslave Africans or to legally define slavery as an institution: it was a conscious decision. They had no problem enslaving Native Americans. After the Pequot War in 1636, they traded some of the war captives for African slaves in the Caribbean, who arrived in Boston in 1638, beginning the regionâs long history with African slavery. Three years later, settlers in Massachusetts made an attempt to govern slavery when they passed the colonyâs first legal code, The Body of Liberties. Article 91 ambiguously stated, âThere shall never be any bond slaverie, villange or Captivitie amongst us, unlessâ someone captured those slaves in just wars, those slaves were âstrangersâ who sold themselves into slavery, or someone else captured, enslaved, and sold them to the colonists. Adding another layer of ambiguity, these slaves were to âhave all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of god established in Israell concerning such persons doeth morally require.â8 At first glance, this clause seems to be a negative, declaring slavery illegal in all but three cases, yet it also opened the door to racial slavery. Most captives taken in so-called just wars would have been Native Americans captured in the vicious Indian wars of the 1630s. Strangers, on the other hand, primarily meant one group of people: Africans. While not many people would have sold themselves into slavery, except perhaps a few destitute English men and women looking for a better life abroad, most of the strangers sold to Massachusetts would have been blacks from the Caribbean and Africa. As for the sentence concerning ancient Israel, it is unclear if men and women could sell their daughters into slavery as suggested in Exodus, although masters probably liked the clause that considered all enslaved âstrangersâ (Leviticus 25:44â46) as permanent, inheritable property. The loopholes in the 1641 Body of Liberties allowed for the existence of racial slavery and possibly created chattel slavery.
Despite the backhanded legalization of slavery in article 91, the legal status of African slaves remained relatively ambiguous throughout the seventeenth century. It seems some masters considered slaves to be indentured servants. By comparing the wills of three seventeenth-century New Englanders, we can see this process. When the Boston merchant Antipas Boyse was composing his last will and testament on 3 July 1669, he took time to consider the fate of his slave Janemet. After two additional years of service to Boyseâs heirs, Janemet would be free, provided he served his masters âfaithfully.â9 Unlike Boyse, who owned African slaves, George Alcock of Roxbury had two white servants, John Plimton and Joseph Wise. Like Janemet, both Wise and Plimton received their freedom shortly after Alcockâs death, this time âafter midsomer next.â10 Other slave owners gave their slaves their freedom shortly after their death as well. Mary Smith, the widow of Bostonian Abraham Smith, stated in her will why she freed her slaves Susan and Maria: for their âgood care & diligence of me & my lat Husband.â Nevertheless, the enslaved women still had to behave themselves for the remainder of Maryâs life; otherwise âthis Deed of Giftâ would âbe frustrate void & of none effect,â indicating their freedom was provisional and not guaranteed.11 Yet conditional freedom was not exclusive to African slaves. Alcock made Plimton pay five pounds to be freed along with Wise.12 Although colonists bought, sold, and passed slaves on to their heirs, many seem to have considered their obligation to serve to be finite and, much like white servants, not lifelong.
The status of the children of enslaved Africans in seventeenth-century Boston was also problematic. English common law long held the notion of partus sequitur patrem, a belief that children took the condition of their fathers. For slave owners looking to increase the number of bondsmen and bondswomen they owned, this was not an issue if the father was a slave. Enslaved women who bore the children of free men, however, proved to be especially problematic for mastersâwho were sometimes the fathers. Virginian slaveholders solved this problem in 1662, eschewing English law and adopting the Roman law principle of partus sequitur ventrem, meaning children took the status of the mother. Interestingly, none of the New England colonies ever adopted this law, but as a historian noted, âcustom and tradition achieved the same end.â13 Even in the eighteenth century, Massachusetts failed to pass a law clarifying the condition of enslaved children, leaving their slave status open to question.
Adding another layer of ambiguity, the seventeenth-century labor market was not always amicable to slavery. In early November 1661, the selectmen of Boston investigated Thomas Deane, who âemployed a Negro in ye manufacture of a Coop.â According to the town leaders, Deaneâs actions were âcontrary to ye orders of ye Towne,â suggesting the selectmen frowned on the use of slave labor in skilled trades. They then issued a cease-and-desist order, commanding that Deane âshall not employ ye sd Negro in ye sd manufacture as a Coop or any other manufacture or science after ye 14th day of this month.â If the slave continued making barrels, his master would be given a âpenalty of 20s, for euery day yt ye sd Negro shall continue in such employment.â14 Beyond official restraint regarding slave labor, it seems most enslaved workers in seventeenth-century New England either provided farm labor in the rural areas or worked as domestics or valets in their mastersâ homes.15 Compared to the eighteenth century, when slave labor was an integral part of all sectors of Bostonâs economy, especially the artisanal trades, the selectmenâs reprimand of Deane and the limited use of slaves in all parts of the economy demonstrate there was at least some hesitancy to employ slave labor.
While an uncertain labor market helped to confuse an already ill-defined institution, much of the ambiguity may have had to do with the behavior of the slaves themselves. Given the low population density of African slaves in colonial New Englandâby 1700, there were ninety thousand inhabitants in New England, only one thousand of whom were slavesâmany slaves attempted to integrate themselves into colonial society.16 This was especially true in Boston, a crowded cosmopolitan port town where Africans could easily mingle with whites, Native Americans, and other Africans. Consider Will, a slave belonging to Captain Prentice. In 1700, Will died after falling off a horse. Although dead, Will was not forgotten. Puritan magistrate Samuel Sewall took time in his diary to commemorate Will, a man Sewall obviously thought to be part of the community. Sewall remembered the slave âmuch delighted in Horses,â and the irony was not lost on the justice that Will ânow dies by a horse.â Beyond Willâs love of all things equine, Sewall also recalled an incident from nearly forty years before, in 1664. In that year, Will saved his âMaster Prentice from a Bear.â Will and Sewall had also spent considerable time together, as the bondsman traveled with the judge and Colonel Townsend to Albany, New York.17 Nevertheless, while Will was obviously trusted and respected by Sewall, the magistrateâs depiction of the slave suggests an obedient, docile paragon of service. Willâs slavery lasted at least forty years, and his only memorial did not mention Willâs friends, family, or community, only Sewallâs.18 Whether Will was as compliant as Sewall suggests will never be known, but his very mention in Sewallâs ...