Massachusetts Body of Liberties
The Massachusetts Body of Liberties, enacted in 1641, is a significant historical legal document that formalized the status of slavery within the Massachusetts Bay Colony, marking a pivotal moment in the establishment of unfree labor in British colonies. This compilation of laws emerged during a period of evolving governance, transitioning from the authority of Governor John Winthrop to a more representative General Court. While it included progressive elements for its time, such as protection for married women and limitations on the treatment of servants, it also explicitly sanctioned slavery under certain conditions, notably for captives taken in war or those who willingly sold themselves.
The Body of Liberties reflected the complexities of Puritan society, which valued individualism and humanitarian principles yet simultaneously embraced the practice of slavery. Although the institution never became widespread in Massachusetts, the document's acceptance of slavery set a precedent that would influence societal norms and economic practices. Over time, the colony's legal stance on slavery would evolve, leading to its gradual decline, particularly after the American Revolution. Understanding the Body of Liberties offers insight into the contradictions and moral dilemmas faced by early American settlers regarding freedom, labor, and human rights.
Massachusetts Body of Liberties
SIGNIFICANCE: The Body of Liberties of 1641 granted slavery in the Massachusetts Bay Colony a formal status, making it an institution in the British colonies.
From its outset, the Massachusetts Bay Colony endorsed the idea of unfree labor. One hundred eighty indentured servants arrived with the original colonists. Food shortages led to the surviving servants being set free in 1830. Unfree labor, however, continued on a private basis, and some White individuals accused of crimes were enslaved by court-appointed enslavers. Captives from the Pequot War (1636–1637) were given over into slavery. Some of these captives were subsequently transported to a Puritan enclave off the coast of Nicaragua, and Black enslaved peoples were introduced from there to the Massachusetts colony. The colony, however, remained without a formal endorsement of slavery until the promulgation of the Body of Liberties in 1641.
Creating the Document
The Body of Liberties evolved out of the gradually weakening authority of Governor John Winthrop and his first Board of Assistants and the emergence of the General Court as a representative body of freemen. In 1635, the General Court appointed a committee to draw up a body of laws for the rights and duties of the colonists. This committee stalled over the church-state conflict, and another committee was impaneled in 1636. John Cotton sat on this committee. Cotton was a devout churchman who drafted a document that derived much of its authority from scripture. Cotton did, however, believe in limitations on authority and resisted adopting biblical statutes wholesale. Winthrop, who was lukewarm to the entire idea, called Cotton’s code “Moses his Judicialls.”
Cotton’s counterpart in drawing up the code was Nathaniel Ward. Ward was a Puritan with a sense of humor and a literary bent. Like most Puritans, he was a friend of strict discipline and a foe of arbitrary authority. He agreed with Winthrop and Cotton that all law was the law of God, but he insisted that the code be based on English common law rather than on the Bible. He became the chief architect and intellectual godfather of the Body of Liberties. The Pequot War slowed deliberations, but by 1639, the committee had created a document that combined Cotton’s and Ward’s work. The final document was adopted in November 1641.
The Slavery Issue
In many ways, the Body of Liberties was an enlightened document and remarkable by seventeenth-century standards. A compilation of one hundred laws, the Body of Liberties allowed for wide judicial discretion and for each case to be judged on its merits. It also effectively barred the legal profession from defending anyone for pay, and it protected married women from assault. It addressed the liberties of servants in humanitarian terms for those times, limiting the number of lashes given to servants to forty. The capital laws were more lenient than those of England. The one problem, however, was slavery. This bold document addressed the slavery issue, stating:
There shall never be any bond slaverie, villainage or captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull captive, taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authoritie.
Although not a ringing endorsement of slavery, the Body of Liberties nevertheless admits to it, opening the way for the official sanction of slavery. Later, stricter codes formalized the institution in New England on a colony-by-colony basis, mainly because trading in enslaved people was profitable. Yankee traders found that enslaved people were more valuable as cargo to be sold to the plantation colonies or in the West Indies than laborers in the northern economy.
Governor Simon Bradstreet estimated there were approximately one hundred to two hundred enslaved Black people in the Massachusetts colony by 1860. The equation of race (“Blacks”) with slavery here is important. Some special laws were passed restricting the movement of Blacks in White society, but the Puritans encouraged Christian conversion and honored marriages between Black individuals. The conditions of slavery were not as harsh as in the plantation colonies. Enslaved people needed to read and write to do their jobs. Although there were occasional isolated instances of rebellion, the enslaved people benefited from the New England love for learning and the strong Puritan emphasis on marriage and family.
Slavery gradually faded away in Massachusetts, perhaps because of its vague legal status. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, a national clamor for a Bill of Rights led individual colonies to adopt their own. While none expressly forbade slavery, the institution seemed at odds with the rhetoric. By 1776, the White population of Massachusetts was 343,845, and the Black population was 5,249. The census of 1790 showed Massachusetts as the only state in which no enslaved people were listed.
Despite the legalization of slavery in the Body of Liberties, slavery was never widespread in Massachusetts except as incidental to trade, but the slave trade was an accepted practice by seventeenth-century European standards. The Puritans themselves were products of a rigorous, harsh, isolated experience. They were humanists and intellectuals with contradictions. They prized sincerity and truthfulness yet practiced repression and inhibition to steel themselves against life’s ills. They had a strong element of individualism in their creed, believing that each person must face their maker alone. Puritan humanism, therefore, never squared with the institution of slavery.
Bibliography
Bailey, Richard A. Race and Redemption in Puritan New England. Oxford UP, 2011.
Byers, Ann. Massachusetts Body of Liberties. Cavendish Square, 2019.
Lloyd, Gordon. "Massachusetts Body of Liberties." Teaching American History, teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-massachusetts-body-of-liberties. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
McManus, Edgar J. Black Bondage in the North. Syracuse UP, 1973.
"Massachusetts Body of Liberties." Commonwealth of Massachusetts, www.mass.gov/info-details/massachusetts-body-of-liberties. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
White, Deborah G., et al. Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans with Documents. 3rd ed. Macmillan Learning, 2021.
Winch, Julie. Between Slavery and Freedom: Free People of Color in America from Settlement to the Civil War. Rowman, 2014.