Transcripts from the “Freedom Petitioners’” Campaign – Grant Stanton

In this post, EAS author Grant Stanton transcribes and collects for the first time all of the documents produced by a group of Black men in Boston who petitioned for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts during the American Revolution. This includes four petitions and a memorial formally submitted to the Massachusetts General Court between 1773 and 1777; a circular letter sent to individual representatives and towns throughout the colony in April 1773; and three draft petition copies – two produced in the summer 1774, and one in January 1777. Additionally, Stanton provides two acts of legislation proposed by representatives in the General Court in response to the petitioners’ appeals, along with a letter the Court addressed to the Continental Congress in 1777 endorsing abolition. Stanton further contextualizes and discusses these documents in his article, “The Freedom Petitioners: Black Patriotism, Black Politics, and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts, 1773-1783,” Early American Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2024).

Figure 1. Reprinted copy of the first freedom petition submitted to the General Court on January 6, 1773. Signed by “Felix” and included in a collection of antislavery articles titled The Appendix. Read before the House of Representatives on January 28, 1773. (Boston, Mass.: Ezekiel Russell, 1773) Document. Internet Archive

Figure 2. Handwritten draft of a petition, January 13, 1777. Unsigned. “Petition for Freedom, 25 May 1774,” Collections Online, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Figure 3. Handwritten petition submitted to the General Court on January 6, 1777 signed by Lancaster Hill, Peter Bes[te]s, Brister Slenser, Prince Hall, and others. Read before the House of Representatives on March 18, 1777. “Petition of Lancaster Hill,” Massachusetts Archives Collections: v. 212-Revolutionary Resolves (Boston, Mass.), 132.

Stanton has transcribed each document without correcting spelling, capitalization, or grammar. He has not noted editorial marks made by contemporaries in the draft documents (e.g. where a line or sentence has been deleted, or when a mark is made indicating a word of phrase was added).

Click “Download” below for a PDF of these transcripts: