In Connecticut, as in many other States, the first slaves were not of African race, but were aborigines, taken in battle and sold as slaves, in the same manner as the Anglo-Saxon forefathers of the early settlers had sold the captives of their spear, over a millennium before. After the fierce and bloody Pequod War, the colonists found on their hands a number of captive Indians, whose disposition formed a pressing question. It did not take long to decide it. To the shame of the conquerors, “Ye prisoners were devided, some to those of the River [Connecticut] and the rest to us” of Massachusetts. Of those taken by the latter, they sent “the male children to Bermudas, by Mr. William Pierce, and the women and maid children are disposed about in the towns. There have now been slain and taken, in all, about 700.” Connecticut’s disposition of her share was, doubtless, much the same as that described above. In the same spirit, the Articles of Confederation of the United New England Colonies, in which both Connecticut and New Haven were included, when drawn up on May 19, 1643, provided that “the whole advantage of the warr (if it please God to bless their Endeavours), whether it be in lands, goods, or personas, shall be proportionally divided among the said Confederates.”²

     The Articles of Confederation also provided “that, if any servant run away from his master into any of these confederated jurisdictions, that, in such case, upon certificate of one magistrate in the jurisdiction of which the said servant fled, or upon other due proof, the said servant shall be delivered, either to his master or any other, that pursues and brings such certificate or proof.” This was the first fugitive slave law in force in Connecticut.

established by statute,” says the editor of the Revision of the State’s Laws in 1821,¹ “but has been indirectly sanctioned by various statutes and frequently recognized by courts, so that it may be said to have been established by law.”² Few slaves were imported at first, and, on May 17, 1660, we find the first reference to negroes in the Connecticut Records.”³ [Note: the quotation mark ending this sentence is not opened in the original.] Then the distrust of bondmen and the fear of treachery in slaves, nearly always shown by masters, is revealed in the General Court’s order “that neither Indian nor negar servants shall be required to train, watch, or ward in the Colony.”⁴

     The number of negroes was “few,” not above thirty, only two of whom were christened, in 1680,⁵ and not until ten years later had they sufficiently increased so as to call the attention of the legislators to their regulation. Connecticut began her black code in October, 1690,⁶ by passing several measures, providing that a “negro, mulatto, or Indian servant” found wandering out of the bounds of the town to which he belonged, without a ticket or pass from an Assistant, or justice of the Peace, or his owner, shall be accounted a runaway and may be seized by any one finding him, brought before the next authority and returned to his master, who must pay the charges. Even a ferryman, transporting a slave without a pass, was liable to a penalty of twenty shillings for each offense.⁷ A free negro without a pass must pay the costs if stopped and brought before a magistrate. The last two laws were repealed in October, 1797.⁸

     The next statute, save one, referring to slaves was passed

in 1703. This shows clearly the survival in colonial days of the potestas of the paterfamilias coming down from the absolute dominion of the house-father in ancient times. It prohibits any “licensed innkeeper, victualler, taverner, or retailer of strong drink” from “suffering any one’s sons, apprentices, servants, or negroes to sit drinking in his house, or have any manner of drink there, without special order from parents or masters.”

     Slaves seem now, for some time, to be repressed by laws continually growing harsher. In May, 1708,” the General Court, taking into consideration that “divers rude and evilminded persons, for the sake of filthy lucre, do receive property stolen by slaves,” and desiring to prevent this and to better govern the slaves, decreed that any one buying or receiving from slaves property without an order from their masters, must return the property and double its value in addition, or, if he has disposed of the original property, treble its value, and, if he will not do this, he is to be whipped with not over twenty stripes. The slaves caught in theft were to be whipped with not over thirty stripes, whether the receivers of the goods from them were found or not. Further, “whereas negro and mulatto servants or slaves’ are become numerous in some parts of this Colonie and are very apt to be turbulent and often quarrelling with white people to the great disturbance of the peace,” it is enacted that a negro disturbing the peace or offering to strike a white person, is to be subject to a penalty of not over thirty stripes.

     In spite of these harsher laws, emancipation was becoming somewhat common, and the Colony feared that it would have to support negroes whose years of usefulness had been spent in work for their masters, and who were manumitted by them,

when old and helpless. To prevent this, in May, 1702,¹ the legislature provided that slaves, set free and coming to want, must be relieved by the owners, their heirs, executors, or administrators. To this act a second one was added in 1711, providing that if the owners or their representatives refused to maintain such emancipated slaves, it should be the duty of the selectmen of the various towns to do so, and then to sue the owners, or their representatives, for the expense² incurred.

     The terrible war between the South Carolinians and the Tuscaroras, ending with the overthrow of the latter, left a large number of Indian prisoners in the hands of the Carolinians, who shipped them as slaves to the other colonies. This importation of vengeful, warlike savages alarmed the people of Connecticut and led to the first steps towards prohibition of the slave trade. The Governor and Council met on July 8, 1715, and considering the fact that several have brought into the colony Carolina Indians, “which have committed many cruel and bloody outrages” there, and may draw off “our Indians,” if their importation be continued, and so “much mischief” may follow, they decided to prohibit importation of Indian slaves, until the meeting of the Assembly, and to require each ship entering port with Indians on board to give bond of £150 to transport them from the colony in twenty days. Further, Indians brought into the colony hereafter are to be “kept in strictest custody,” confined and “prevented from communicating with other Indians,” unless owner give the same bond as above to remove them from Connecticut in twenty days.³

     The next October, the General Court, copying a Massachusetts Act of 1712, made the prohibition of bringing in Indian slaves permanent, since “divers conspiracies, outrages, barbarities, murders, burglaries, thefts, and other notorious

crimes at sundry times and, especially of late, have been perpetrated by Indians and other slaves, . . . being of a malicious and vengeful spirit, rude and insolent in their behaviour, and very ungovernable, the overgreat number of which, considering the different circumstances in this Colony from the plantations in the islands and our having considerable numbers of Indians, natives of our country, . . . may be of pernicious consequence.”¹ The legislature decreed the forfeiture of all Indians hereafter imported, and the payment of a fine of £150 by shipmaster or other persons bringing Indians.

     The preamble quoted above shows that this measure was not prompted by affection for the slaves, but by fear of them; but it was the beginning of the end—the first law restricting slaveholders’ rights in Connecticut, to be followed by one and another of the same restrictive kind, until all men who trod the soil of the State were free.

     The next law on the records was passed in May, 1723, and provided that a slave out of doors after 9 P. M., without order from master or mistress, might be secured and brought before a justice of the Peace by any citizen and, if found guilty, should receive not over ten stripes, unless the master were willing to pay a fine of ten shillings² to release him. Any one who should receive such a slave must, on conviction, pay a like fine, half to the town and half to the informer.

     The black code was completed by the act of May, 1730, declaring that a slave speaking such words as would be actionable in a free person, should be whipped, on conviction, with not over forty stripes and sold for the costs, unless the master were willing to pay them. However, there was a ray of justice in the provision of the law that the slave might make the same pleas and offer the same evidence as a free person.³

     From this time on, the more engrossing subjects of the struggle between the French and the colonists, and the growth of material prosperity seem to have thrust aside the topic of slavery from the legislative halls. For forty-four years we find few more laws.¹ It is true, however, that at the General Assembly in 1738, “it was inquired—whether the infant slaves of Christian masters may be baptized in the right of their masters, they solemnly promising to train them in the knowledge and admonition of the Lord; and whether it is the duty of such masters to offer such children and thus religiously to promise.” To the great credit of the colonists, both these questions were answered affirmatively, and thus the devout Christians of Connecticut, preserving the solidarity of the family, unconsciously went back to the early Aryan custom, that the God of the house-father should be worshiped by all under his sway. The growth of free ideas,² the coming of the Revolution, the increase of the slaves, “injurious,” it was thought, to the poor and “inconvenient”—for the best motives are apt to be mixed of good and evil—led, in October, 1774, to the enactment of the law that “no Indian, negro, or mulatto slave shall at any time hereafter³ be brought or imported into this State,⁴ by sea or land, from any place or places whatsoever, to be disposed of, left, or sold within the State,” and any offender against this law should pay £100.⁵ So the State set herself as resolutely against the slave trade, as she was destined to do later against slavery itself.

     A good review of the legal condition of the slave in these days is given by Judge Reeves,¹ who., “lest the slavery, which prevailed in this State, be forgotten,” mentioned “some things that show that slavery here was very far from being of the absolute rigid kind. The master had no control over the life of his slave. If he killed him, he was liable to the same punishment, as if he killed a freeman. The master was as liable to be sued by the slave, in an action for beating, and wounding, or for immoderate chastisement, as he would be if he had thus treated an apprentice. A slave was capable of holding property in character of devisee or legatee. If the master should take away such property, his slave would be entitled to an action against him by his prochein ami. From the whole, we see that slaves had the same right of life and property as apprentices, and that the difference betwixt them was this, an apprentice is a servant for time and the slave is a servant for life.”²

     I have been able to obtain but few recorded cases in which the question of freedom or slavery came up in the courts

during this first period. In the end of 1702, or beginning of 1703, a slave, Abda, belonging to Capt. Thomas Richards of Hartford, escaped from his master and was succored by Capt. Joseph Wadsworth of Hartford, who, on Feb. 12th, 1703, opposed the constable in executing a writ of arrest on Abda. This early fugitive slave case was brought before the Governor and Council on Feb. 25.¹ They recommended the County Court to examine the case. Apparently Abda brought an action on the case against Mr. Richards, as a counter suit, claiming damages of £20 from his master, “for his unjust holding and detaining the said Abda in his service as his bondsman, for the space of one year past.” The verdict was for £12 damages, “thereby virtually establishing Abda’s right to freedom,” which he, a mulatto, seems to have claimed largely on account of his white blood.²

     Mr. Richards pressed the case further and, in May, 1704, obtained from the General Court an order to have a hearing before it in October, on his petition concerning Abda.³ At that time the case was brought up and the fugitive was returned to his master, as Gov. Saltonstall said, “according to the laws and constant practice of this Colony and all other plantations (as well as by the civil law) such persons as are born of negro bondwomen are themselves in like condition, i. e. born in servitude.⁴ Nor can there be any precedent in this Government, or any of Her Majesty’s plantations, produced to the contrary and, though the law of this Colony doth not say that such persons as are born of negro woman and supposed to be mulattoes shall be slaves (which was needless, because of the constant practice by which they are held as such), yet it saith expressly that no man shall put away or make free his negro or mulatto slave, etc., which

undeniably shows and declares an approbation of such servitude, and that mulattoes may be held as slaves within this government.”¹

     A later fugitive slave² we find advertised for in the New York Mercury on July 28, 1760, and the advertisement has many little touches which go to show how slaves lived and were treated. “Run away from Abraham Davenport of Stamford in Conn., the 4th of June instant, a Mulatto Man Slave named Vanhall, aged 31 years, about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches high, very swarthy; has a small Head and Face, a large Mouth, and has an odd Action with his Head, when talking with any Person; has very long Arms and large Hands for a Person of his size and has an old Countenance for one of his Age; his Hair, like others of his kind was but lately cut off; was brought up to the Farming business, is a lively active Fellow and pretends to under stand the Violin. Had on, when he went away, a Felt Hat, a Grey Cut Wig, a light homespun Flannel lappelled Vest, which had been lined with fine old Cotton and Linnen Ticken, Doeskin Breeches, he took several pairs of Stockings and one or two pairs of Shoes, a Violin and a small Hatchet, &c., and ’tis probable he might change his Cloaths. Whoever takes up and secures said Mulatto, so that his Master may have him again, shall receive £5. Reward, and reasonable charges paid.”

     Late in Colonial times,³ we find Hagar, a New London negress, appearing before the Governor and Council and pleading that she and her children were lawfully freed by her former master, James Rogers, and so her refusal to yield herself as a slave to James Rogers, Jr., his grandson, was justified. The decision was that she should give bond to prove her freedom at the next County Court and be secured from molestation in the meanwhile.

     On this topic comparatively little can be found. Each larger village had its negro corner in the Meeting House gallery and in the graveyard. In the larger towns, such as Norwich, New Haven, Hartford, and New London, there were several hundred negroes. They were for the most part indulgently treated and admitted, at least in many places, into the local churches as fellow-members with the white population.² They must, however, occupy their allotted gallery seats, which in Torrington were boarded up so that the negroes could see no one and be seen by none. If they attempted to sit elsewhere, or refused to go to church if made to sit there, excommunication was apt to follow.³

     Among early negro slaves recorded in Connecticut are some belonging to John Pantry of Hartford in 1653, and one Cyrus, belonging to Henry Wolcott, Jr., of Windsor, and rated at £30 in his inventory.⁴ Miss Caulkins states that early in the eighteenth century slaves were worth from 60 shillings to £30, and that later the best were valued as high as £100. She instances the purchase of a negro boy by Rev. William Hart of Saybrook in 1749 for £90, Old Tenor, about equal to £60 in coin.⁵ In 1708, and probably the same state of things continued later, we learn the negroes mostly came from “neighboring governments, save some times half a dozen a year from the West Indies”; but “none ever imparted by the Royal African Company or separate traders.”⁶

For the most part, only one or two negroes were owned by any person. In some parts of the State, as at Waterbury,¹ we find it customary for the clergymen to have two slaves, a man and a woman. Occasionally, however, more were owned by a wealthy man, as in the case of Capt. John Perkins of Hanover Society,² Norwich, who left fifteen slaves by his will in 1761. The slaves were generally kindly treated and were docile, though we hear of the death of a man in 1773 from lockjaw, caused by a bite in the thumb by a young slave he was chastising.³ The majority, however, could show much more amicable relations. For example, Mingo,⁴ in Waterbury, who, about 1730, when a boy, was hired out by his master to drive a plow, later to work with a team and, 1764, at his master’s death, was allowed to choose which son he would live with. He chose to live with the one who kept the old homestead and remained there until he began keeping a tavern, when he left and went to another son’s. He had a family, and left considerable property at his death in 1800. Indeed, as early as 1707, we have evidence of the possession of property by a negro, for, in October of that year, Lieut. John Hawley, administrator to the estate of John Negro, was granted power by the General Court to sell £10 worth of his land, it appearing from the Fairfield County Probate Records that he owed that amount more than his moveables would pay.⁵

     Towards the close of this period, the reasonableness and justice of holding slaves began to be questioned and emancipations,”

from a conscientious regard to justice,” begin to appear. One man in Norwich not only freed three slaves, but, “as a compensation for their services, leased them a very valuable farm on very moderate rate.”¹ That section of the State seems to have been considerably stirred on this question, and in the Norwich Packet, July 7, 1774, we find an anti-slavery appeal of sufficient vigor to warrant quotation in full:

     “To all you who call yourselves Sons of Liberty in America, Greeting:

     “My Friends, We know in some good measure the inestimable value of liberty, But were we once deprived of her she would then appear much more valuable than she now appears. We also see her, standing as it were, tiptoe on the highest bough ready for flight. Why is she departing? What is it disturbs her repose? Surely, some foul monster of hideous shape and hateful kind, opposite in its nature to hers, with all its frightful appearances and properties, iron hands and leaden feet, formed to gripe and crush, hath intruded itself into her peaceful habitation and ejected her. Surely this must be the case, for we know oppositions can not dwell together. Is it not time, high time to search for this Achan? this disturber of Israel? High time, I say, to examine for the cause of those dark and gloomy appearances that cast a shade over our glory, and is not this it? Are we not guilty of the same crime we impute to others? Of the same facts, that we say are unjust, cruel, arbitrary, despotic, and without law in others? Paul argued in this manner—‘Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonorest thou God?’ And may we not use the same mode of argument and say—We that declare, and that with much warmth and zeal, it is unjust, cruel, barbarous, unconstitutional, and without law to enslave, do we enslave? Yes, verily we do! A black cloud witnesseth

against us and our own mouths condemn us! How preposterous our conduct! How vain and hypocritical our pretences! Can we expect to be free, so long as we are determined to enslave? (Signed) Honesty.”¹

     Before we turn from Colonial times,² the fact is worthy of note—that, though “redemptioners” were not common in Connecticut, white men were often bound out to service for a term of years, as in other colonies. We find in 1670 a man sold to the Barbadoes for four years as a slave, for “notorious stealing,” “breaking up and robbing of “two mills and living” in a renegade manner in the wilderness.” In 1756, a town pauper in Waterbury,³ for stealing, was whipped and bound out to the plaintiff, as a servant, till the sum stolen and the costs be paid by his work, and the law on the statute books was that “all single persons, who lived an idle and riotous life,” might be bound out to service to pay the costs of prosecution.