?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
"ALL MEN ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL" (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) MASSACHUSETTS. "This is to inform you that Hannah Lilly, a poor person belonging to the town of Salisbury. . ." *"This is to inform you that there is a Black Man by the name of Newport Wiggins. . ." Two manuscript documents on one piece of small 8vo paper, alluding to the welfare and upkeep of the District's poor; one white, the other black. Signed by three of the District's Selectmen. Newburyport, MA, 30 January 1792
Massachusetts effectively put an end to slavery in 1781 when a slave named Quock Walker sued his master for his freedom. From that point onward blacks were for the most part, treated as citizens of the State. The Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ruled that Walker was free because of the state's "Declaration of Rights," drawn from the Bill of Rights (within the state's Constitution), that "all men are born free and equal" and the Commonwealth then brought suit against Walker's owner Mr. Jennison for wrongful imprisonment.
