George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[361] others, to give their testimony even in capital cases.

Chap. XVII.} 1777.

At the opening of the revolution, William Gordon, the congregationalist minister of Roxbury, though he declined to ‘unsaint’ every man who still yielded to the prevailing prejudice, declared with others against perpetuating slavery, and in November, 1776, published in the ‘Independent Chronicle’ a plan sent from Connecticut for its gradual extermination out of that colony. In the same month and in the same newspaper, ‘a son of liberty’ demanded the repeal of all laws supporting slavery, because they were ‘contrary to sound reason and revelation.’¹ In January, 1777, seven-negro slaves joined in petitioning the general court ‘that they might be restored to that freedom which is the natural right of all men, and that their children might not be held as slaves after they arrive at the age of twenty-one years.’ This petition was referred to a very able committee, on which are the names of Sergeant and John Lowell of Boston, both zealous abolitionists; the latter then the leading lawyer in the state.

In May, 1777, just before the meeting of the general court at Boston, Gordon, finding in the multiplicity of business before the general court the only apology for their not having attended to the case of slaves, as a preliminary to total emancipation asked for a final stop to the public and private sale of them by an act of the state. Clothing the argument of Montesquieu in theological language, he said: ‘If God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, I can see no reason why a black rather than a white man should ’