A CHAPTER OF HISTORY.

THE theory which a grave and learned northern senator has recently announced in Congress, that slavery, like the cotton plant, is confined by natural laws to certain parallels of latitude, beyond which it can by no possibility exist, however it may have satisfied its author and his auditors, has unfortunately no verification in the facts of the case. Slavery is singularly cosmopolitan in its habits. The offspring of pride, and lust, and avarice, it is indigenous to the world. Rooted in the human heart, it defies the rigors of winter in the steppes of Tartary and the fierce sun of the tropics. It has the universal acclimation of sin.

The first account we have of negro slaves in New England is from the pen of John Josselyn. Nineteen years after the landing at Plymouth, this interesting traveller was for some time the guest of Samuel Maverick, who then dwelt, like a feudal baron, in his fortalice on Noddle's Island, surrounded by retainers and servants, bidding defiance to his Indian neighbors behind his strong

walls, with "four great guns" mounted thereon, and "giving entertainment to all new comers gratis."

"On the 2d of October, 1639, about nine o'clock in the morning, Mr. Maverick's negro woman," says Josselyn, "came to my chamber, and in her own country language and tune sang very loud and shrill. Going out to her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and would willingly have expressed her grief in English had she been able to speak the language; but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment. Whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, and resolved to entreat him in her behalf; for I had understood that she was a queen in her own country, and observed dutiful and humble garb used towards her by another negro, who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a breed of negroes; and therefore, seeing she would not yield by persuasions to company with a negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, willed she, nilled she, to go to her bed, which was no sooner done than she thrust him out again. This she took in high disdain beyond her slavery; and this was the cause of her grief."

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That the peculiar domestic arrangements and unfastidious economy of this slave-breeding settler were not countenanced by the Puritans of that early time, we have sufficient evidence. It is but fair to suppose, from the

silence of all other writers of the time with respect to negroes and slaves, that this case was a marked exception to the general habits and usage of the colonists. At an early period a traffic was commenced between the New England colonies and that of Barbadoes; and it is not improbable that slaves were brought to Boston from that island. The laws, however, discouraged their introduction and purchase, giving freedom to all held to service at the close of seven years.

In 1641, two years after Josselyn's adventure on Noddle's Island, the code of laws known by the name of the Body of Liberties was adopted by the colony. It was drawn up by Nathaniel Ward, the learned and ingenious author of the Simple Cobbler of Agawam, the earliest poetical satire of New England. One of its provisions was as follows:

There shall be never any bond slaverie, villianage, or captivitie amongst us, unles it be lawfull captives taken in just warres and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel doth morally require."

In 1646 Captain Smith, a Boston church member, in connection with one Keeser, brought home two negroes whom he obtained by the surprise and burning of a negro village in Africa and the massacre of many of its

inhabitants.

Sir Richard Saltonstall, one of the assistants, presented a petition to the general court, stating the outrage thereby committed as threefold in its nature — viz., murder, man stealing, and Sabbath breaking; inasmuch as the offence of "chasing the negers, as aforesayde, upon the Sabbath day, (being a servile work, and such as cannot be considered under any other head,) is expressly capital by the law of God;" for which reason he prays that the offenders may be brought to justice, "soe that the sin they have committed may be upon their own heads and not upon ourselves."

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Upon this petition the general court passed the following order, eminently worthy of men professing to rule in the fear and according to the law of God to evil doers, and a praise to them that do well:— "The general court, conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what has passed, and such a law for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter and others unlawfully taken be by the first opportunity, at the charge of the country for the present, sent to his native country, Guinea, and a letter with him of the indignation of the court thereabout and justice

thereof, desiring our honored governor would please put this order in execution."

There is, so far as we know, no historical record of the actual return of these stolen men to their home. A letter is extant, however, addressed in behalf of the general court to a Mr. Williams on the Piscataqua, by whom one of the negroes had been purchased, requesting him to send the man forthwith to Boston, that he may be sent home, "which this court do resolve to send back without delay."

Three years after, in 1649, the following law was placed upon the statute book of the Massachusetts colony:

"If any man stealeth a man, or mankind, he shall surely be put to death."

It will thus be seen that these early attempts to introduce slavery into New England were opposed by severe laws and by that strong popular sentiment in favor of human liberty which characterized the Christian radicals who laid the foundations of the colonies. It was not the rigor of her northern winter, nor the unkindly soil of Massachusetts, which discouraged the introduction of slavery in the first half century of her existence as a colony. It was the Puritan's recognition of the brotherhood of man in sin, suffering, and redemption, his estimate of the awful responsibilities and eternal destinies of humanity,