Robert Rantoul, Jr. (1805-1852) presented his paper on “Negro Slavery in Massachusetts” for a Beverly, Massachusetts, audience in 1833, fifty years after Massachusetts courts ruled slavery to be unconstitutional in the state. A young lawyer and reformer, Rantoul lectured about Massachusetts’s past history of enslaving African and Indigenous people at a time when slavery was growing stronger than ever in the southern states. Divisions between Americans intensified as the antislavery movement began gaining momentum in New England and elsewhere. Rantoul acknowledged that even those who opposed the practice disagreed over how best to eliminate it: “By the collision between the Colonization society and the Anti-slavery society, the subject of African bondage has been made a subject of interest in almost every village.”
Rantoul, Sr., Robert. Negro Slavery in Massachusetts. Essex Institute, 1887. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l98-053/. Accessed on June 23, 2025.
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