Petition of Slaves to Massachusetts Legislature

Jenny Rivera

History 11

Professor Smith

5 November 2015

Petition of Slaves to Massachusetts Legislature

        During the American Revolution many American soldiers sacrificed their lives to get the freedom they believed they deserved. The American colonies were tired of British rule and they knew the only way to break free from Great Britain was to fight for their freedom.  Before the fighting began, many American founding fathers came together and wrote the Declaration of Independence. In the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers expressed their dislike for British rule in the colonies and argued that all men have unalienable rights to freedom bestowed to them. As the American Revolution came to an end, the American colonies defeated Great Britain and won their freedom and the Declaration of Independence became an important document that later inspired the Petition of Slaves to Massachusetts Legislature.

         The Petition of Slaves to Massachusetts Legislature is a petition read to the Council and House of Representatives of Massachusetts to allow slaves to be free and abolish slavery from the state. Their first step to achieve this were “freedom petition” which were arguments for liberty presented to New England’s court written by enslaved African Americans. They began to uses key points from the Declaration of Independence to argue why abolishing slavery is the unalienable right of every African American slave. When we compare the slavery issue with the American Revolution we can see that the slaves are the Americans and the Americans now have become the people they hated for surpassing their freedom.

        When looking at the comparison of the two documents we see that the issue of freedom is similar in that both groups want their freedom from their suppressor. The colonies argued in the Declaration of Independence that they were given unalienable rights to freedom “bestowed equally on all mankind,” which also includes men of color, the slaves. African Americans argued that they did not sign away this right but instead were forcefully taken from their land and brought to a new world to be sold, degraded, and condemned to a life of slavery. Now these enslaved African Americans are coming together to try and get the freedom they deserve according to the Declaration of Independence.

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