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  Stewart rose in the customs service, becoming paymaster general of the American Board of Customs. In October, 1769, Stewart sailed to England with Somerset to help raise his sister Cecilia’s children after the death of her husband. They settled in London. Somerset, with new household duties, familiarized himself with the city and found a black community of thousands of former slaves and free persons, mainly from the British West Indian colonies.3

  The large number of former slaves proved unsettling to Sir John Fielding, the man who had modernized the London police force. In 1762, he published a book of extracts from the statutes that governed merchants and artisans of London, hoping that doing so would improve their understanding of the laws. In this, he anticipated modern administrative regulation of business.4

  In his book, he tried to discourage colonials from bringing their slaves to England. He explained that when slaves were brought to London, “They put themselves on a footing with other servants, become intoxicated with liberty, grow refractory, and…begin to expect wages.”

  Fielding warned colonials that there were “a great number of black men and women who…make it their business to corrupt and dissatisfy the mind of every fresh black servant that comes to England; …makes it not only difficult but dangerous to the proprietor of their slaves to recover the possession of them, when once they are spirited away.”

  In his final argument against bringing slaves to England Fielding declared that the slaves would be useless —and dangerous—when they returned to the colonies:

  The sweets of liberty and the conversation with free men and Christians, enlarge their minds and enable them…to form such comparisons of the different situations, as only serve…to embitter their state of slavery, to make them restless, prompt to conceive, and alert to execute the blackest conspiracies against their governors and masters.

  Some London blacks were free. Some, like Somerset, were slaves to colonials living in London. Some had been freed by their masters. Some worked; some were beggars known as the “St. Giles Blackbirds.” Some were popular artists and singers. Others were seamen or servants.5 Some had been runaways whose owners had given up looking for them because, according to Fielding, “the mob [was] on their side.” The “mob” was “the working people of London, the preindustrial craftsmen and laborers who poured into the streets of the capital in their thousands to demonstrate for ‘Wilkes and Liberty.’”6 John Wilkes was a colorful character in the East End of London in the 1760s and 1770s. He was elected to parliament, but having incurred George III’s displeasure was denied his seat repeatedly and was often arrested, only to be freed by the mob shouting “Wilkes and Liberty.”

  Somerset met many blacks on the streets while running errands for his master, in the stores, and along the docks where he looked longingly at ships that might take him to freedom in a friendly climate. He also became acquainted with some white persons, possibly those with whom Stewart was friendly or had business connections. His pleasant personality, noted in connection with his activities in the colonies, generated friendships in England as well. His conversations with “free men and Christians,” as Fielding suggested, may have led to his decision to leave Stewart.

  In August of 1771, he was baptized in the Church of St. Andrew, Holborn. He probably took his first name, James, at that time. His godparents were Thomas Walkin, Elizabeth Cade, and John Morrow. Some thought that baptism— becoming a Christian—would either ensure freedom for a slave, which was not true, or would be a positive element in any litigation concerning his status. Some five or six cases seeking freedom for black slaves were brought before English courts after 1769. This litigation had been inspired by Granville Sharp.

  Sharp, a thin, short man with intense features, had illustrious religious ancestors; he was grandson of the archbishop of York, and son of an archdeacon. He disdained the ministry and applied his fine mind to a variety of intellectual matters while working as a government clerk in the ordinance department. He was an intellectual dilettante until he stumbled onto the problem of slavery. He had befriended Jonathan Strong, a young black slave whose master had beaten him nearly to death. Sharp assisted in Strong’s recovery and helped him get a job after he recovered. Two years later, Strong’s “owner” saw him and had him detained to be shipped to Jamaica to be sold.

  Sharp secured Strong’s release. He was appalled by Strong’s owner’s actions and could not believe they were permitted under the laws of England.7 Although he was not a lawyer, Sharp thoroughly researched the confusing precedents on the subject. In 1769 he wrote a powerful tract in support of his views,8 and helped secure the freedom of five or six runaway slaves who had been recaptured by their masters.

  Somerset left Stewart’s home on October 1, 1771, and did not return. Stewart was not only dismayed at Somerset’s action, but felt Somerset had betrayed him and “insulted his person.” He posted notices and may have hired slave catchers.9 Somerset was caught, and on November 26 was delivered to Captain Knowles aboard the Ann and Mary, a ship preparing to sail to Jamaica. Knowles was to sell him there. Knowles’s sailors dragged Somerset into the hold and put chains on him; chains that Somerset must have thought would never come off.

  But they did come off. His godparents acted quickly. On December 3, a week after he had been captured, they petitioned the Court of King’s Bench for a writ of habeas corpus, with affidavits stating that Somerset was being held against his will aboard ship by Captain Knowles. Lord Mansfield, the chief justice of the court, issued a writ requiring Knowles to explain to the court the reason for Somerset’s detention.10

  King’s Bench was the oldest and highest common law court in England; it was so named because in earlier years, the king himself sat in judgment in that court. In 1772, it consisted of a chief justice and four associate justices. One was William Blackstone, the author of the Commentaries on the Law of England, which were well known to colonial lawyers. In 1765, he had written his interpretation of the confused English precedents concerning slavery:

  And this spirit of liberty is so deeply implanted in our constitution, and rooted even in our very soil, that a slave or a Negro, the moment he lands in England, falls under the protection of the laws and so far becomes a freeman.11

  Lord Mansfield was a former attorney general, a cabinet minister, and a firm upholder of the powers of Parliament over the king and the colonies.12 No radical abolitionist, Mansfield was a powerful jurist and parliamentarian who dominated the Court of King’s Bench. His major fame as a jurist was in rationalizing British law to facilitate commerce. He was careful to include in his opinion on Somerset’s case that “Contract for the sale of a slave is good here; the sale is a matter to which the law properly and readily attaches.”13 Mansfield was speaking only to the commerce in slaves relating to the colonies, not to the authority of a master in England.

  On December 9, Captain Knowles appeared in King’s Bench with Somerset and a written explanation of why he had been holding Somerset. His reason was simple: Stewart had delivered his slave Somerset to Captain Knowles so that Knowles could take the slave to be sold in Jamaica. Somerset’s lawyer, William Davy, asked for more time to prepare. Mansfield released Somerset, with sureties, until the hearing. Somerset remained in London, and appeared at the final hearing in his case, which took place on June 22, 1772.

  After Somerset was released by Mansfield, he went to meet Granville Sharp. Sharp had secured freedom for other slaves, following the same approach that Somerset had used—obtaining affidavits of white witnesses alleging that the runaway slave was held against his will. These affidavits were submitted to Lord Mansfield, who required the person imprisoning the slave to explain his authority.

  In Sharp’s previous cases involving slaves brought to England, Lord Mansfield had persuaded the slave owner to free the slave, thus enabling the chief justice to avoid what for him was a complex legal and social problem of liberty versus property. In 1771, Mansfield had told a lawyer for another escaped slave:

  Perhaps i
t is much better that [the legality of slavery] should never be discussed or settled. I don’t know what the consequences may be, if the masters were to lose their property by accidentally bringing their slaves to England. I hope it never will be finally discussed; for I would have all masters think them free, and all Negroes think they were not, because then they would both behave better.14

  Mansfield had a personal interest in the situation of people of color. He was especially fond of his grandniece Dido Elizabeth Lindsey, who was the daughter of Sir John Lindsey, Mansfield’s nephew. Dido’s mother had been aboard a Spanish ship that Lindsey had captured. He acknowledged his paternity in his will.15 Dido, in a painting with her cousin Elizabeth Murray, appeared to be a light-skinned black woman. She lived with Mansfield’s family and had grown up close to Mansfield’s grandnieces— her cousins—and she was accepted socially. She wrote letters for Mansfield when he was too ill to write. In his will he confirmed her freedom, left her £500 plus £100 per annum for life, and the life use of a painting of himself “to put her in mind of one she knew from her infancy and always honored with uninterrupted confidence and friendship.”16

  Mansfield released Somerset temporarily, but he was not a free man yet. The case dragged on while Mansfield tried to persuade Stewart to free Somerset. Mansfield did not want to decide on the legality of slavery in England. But the West Indian planters wanted a decision upholding slavery in Britain because the uncertainty was affecting the price of their “property.” They financed Stewart’s defense. Stewart promised them not to cave in to Mansfield’s urging. Mansfield even tried to persuade Elizabeth Cade, the “poor widow” who had paid for the writ of habeas corpus that freed Somerset, to purchase Somerset herself and set him free. She replied that this would acknowledge that Stewart “had a right to assault and imprison a poor innocent man in this kingdom, and that she would never be guilty of setting so bad an example.”17

  Mansfield was exasperated with the planters. He warned them in a preliminary hearing that they were likely to lose. He may have resolved the conflicting precedents in his own mind, or may have used this pressure to achieve a settlement. He told them that the case was so clear that it was unnecessary to convene the full court; he had succeeded in five or six cases in settling the matter by the owner agreeing to free the slave. He recommended that Stewart free Somerset, but: “if the parties will have judgment, whatever the consequences, fiat justitia, ruat coelum (let justice be done though the Heavens fall).”

  Stewart’s lawyer had argued that freeing the fourteen or fifteen thousand slaves in England would produce profound disruption, and that the owners would suffer a loss of £700,000, or an average of £50 per slave. To this, Mansfield responded, “£50 a head may not be a high price.”

  To Stewart’s claim that the uncertainty on the issue was already disturbing the commercial world, Mansfield told the slave owners that they had come to the wrong place to get the issue settled: “An application to Parliament, if the merchants think the question of great commercial concern, is the best, and perhaps the only method of settling the point for the future.”18 His approach echoed Mansfield’s attachment to the principle of parliamentary supremacy over the colonies that was emphasized in the Declaratory Act of 1766. Having warned the merchants that they might lose, he postponed the decision so that they might reflect on his warning. The merchants tried, but were unable even to secure a hearing on a proposed bill despite their influence in Parliament.19 No reason was given, but we may assume that the members were content to let the matter rest while it was before the court.

  In late May, a London newspaper speculated on the consequences of Mansfield’s decision:

  The West-India merchants have, we hear, obtained a promise from Mr. Stewart not to accommodate the Negro cause, but to have the point solemnly determined; since, if the laws of England do not confirm the colony laws with respect to property in slaves, no man of common sense will, for the future, lay out his money in so precarious a commodity. The consequences of which will be inevitable ruin to the British West Indies.20

  On June 22, Somerset prepared for his final judgment. Many of his friends and interested blacks attended court that day. Granville Sharp was not in court. Sharp had pressed Mansfield to decide on the legality of slavery for several years. Mansfield had avoided the issue, but now appeared prepared to face it. Sharp’s presence, some believed, might have antagonized Mansfield.

  Bewigged, Lord Mansfield mounted the bench while the clerk called the case of “James Somerset, a Negro, on Habeas Corpus.” Mansfield recited the facts, discussed the law briefly and concluded:

  The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory; it’s so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.21

  Black members of the audience rose and bowed to the court. Somerset basked in the pleasure of being a hero in the black community. He was the guest of honor at a party of nearly two hundred blacks. The community celebrated not only his victory, but freedom for all black slaves in England. Sharp told him that Lord Mansfield had decided that a slave could not be held captive by his master. This, he said, would effectively abolish slavery in England.

  That was the interpretation of the Somerset decision in both Britain and in the colonies.22 The London papers took note. The Public Advertiser, June 27, 1772, wrote:

  On Monday near two hundred blacks with their ladies had an entertainment at a public-house in Westminster, to celebrate the triumph which their brother Somerset had obtained over Mr. Stuart [sic], his master. Lord Mansfield’s health was echoed round the room; and the evening was concluded with a ball. The tickets for admission to this black assembly were 5s. each.

  Parliament never took issue with Mansfield’s decision. There would have been little enthusiasm in Britain for encouraging colonials to bring their slaves to England, as Sir John Fielding made clear in his 1762 book.23 The idea of introducing slavery into the law of England would have little or no support among the common people.24

  Benjamin Franklin, then in London, was unimpressed. He minimized the Somerset decision at the time it was published.

  It is said that some generous humane persons subscribed to the expense of obtaining the liberty by law for Somerset the Negro….It is to be wished that the same humanity may extend itself among numbers; if not to the procuring liberty for those that remain in our colonies, at least to obtain a law for abolishing the African commerce in slaves, and declaring the children of present slaves free after they become of age....

  —Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity!25

  The decision in Somerset’s case meant more than Franklin suggested. If a master could not use force to restrain a runaway slave, the slave could liberate himself. On July 10, 1772, a little more than two weeks after the Somerset decision, Charles Stewart, Somerset’s “owner,” received a letter from an acquaintance named John Riddell who lived in Bristol Wells:

  I am disappointed by Mr. Dubin who has run away. He told the servants that he had rec’d a letter from his Uncle Somerset acquainting him that Lord Mansfield had given them their freedom and he was determined to leave me as soon as I returned from London which he did without even speaking to me. I don’t find that he has gone off with anything of mine. Only carried off all his own cloths which I don’t know whether he had any right to do so. I believe I shall not give my self any trouble to look aft
er the ungrateful villain. But his leaving me just at this time rather proves inconvenient.26

  “Uncle Somerset” probably hoped he had many such nephews and nieces. Over time, many black slaves in Britain freed themselves, as had Mr. Dubin, by walking away from their masters, who, like Mr. Riddell, decided not to seek them out.27 Sharp’s antislavery society gained in size and influence. Slavery was abolished in the British colonies in 1833.

  In the end, James Somerset merged into the black community of London, but his case lived on. And Mansfield’s description of slavery as “so odious” echoed through the Anglo-American world and gave the impression that he had abolished slavery in Britain: “News of the case echoed through American drawing rooms—the first repudiation of forced work by the mother country.”28

  Somerset never knew that his private quest for freedom was the spark that helped start the American Revolution and that has haunted the nation down to the present day.

  Chapter 2

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  The Tinderbox

  * * *

  Beginning in the early spring and continuing until late fall of 1772, published reports of Lord Mansfield’s decision trickled into the colonies through weekly newspapers. There were at least fortythree stories about Somerset in at least twenty newspapers, all of which made clear in different ways that black slaves in England had been freed by that decision.1 The vast majority of these reports appeared in northern newspapers— Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, and New Hampshire. There were accounts published in two of the slave states, Virginia and South Carolina, where fewer newspapers existed. Two of the papers were in Rhode Island where many slave owners from South Carolina and Georgia had summer homes.