The Sheffield Declaration, a Massachusetts lawyer, a French aristocrat and a red hot shovel. From these...freedom springs.
Elizabeth was born around the mid 1740s (1744 being the common date cited) in what was then the British Colony of New York. What she learned and acted upon in regards to Liberty and Freedom laid the foundations for one of the earliest examples of abolition in America. Pieter Hogeboom was Elizabeth's first owner, and she and her sister were born into slavery on his farm in Claverack, a village twenty miles south of Albany. Known as "Bett", she eventually ended up with Hannah, Pieter's daughter, and her husband John Ashley. Around the age of fourteen, Elizabeth her sister "Lizzie", lived with the Ashley's in Sheffield, Massachusetts. After Pieter died in 1758, they remained with John and Hannah, presumably inherited from the Estate.
John Ashley was an honorable man and a pillar of the community. In the upstairs study of his home, which stands to this day, the first tremors of Revolution and Independence from Britain occurred, and the seeds of slavery's demise in Massachusetts were planted. Developed, debated, and accepted by a local group of influential men in 1773, The Sheffield Declaration or Resolves, became the unintentional precursor of the Declaration of Independence, and the death knell of widespread slavery in the northern colonies. Both John Ashely and Theodore Sedgwick were part of it. They were not the only individuals in the room, but were the two of most importance to Elizabeth and to what she would later achieve. "That mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property." This first "resolve" was probably heard and witnessed by Bett as she served those creating and debating the document up in the study. She could neither read nor write, but she most certainly understood the ramifications and depth of what was being discussed by her master, John, and the others. She likely made that disconnection between Liberty and Slavery, seeing conflicts within current ideas of achieving American independence from Britain and the concepts of personal freedom.
Hannah Hogeboom-Ashely was stern and seemingly prone to violence. Perhaps it was her Dutch upbringing, maybe she was just plain mean. Despite knowing Elizabeth all her life, she still considered Bett property, with a divine right to inflict her superiority on a whim. 18th-century Massachusetts was not the agrarian South, and differed in its outlook on slavery. By and large, slaves were considered part of the Master's or Mistress's family. They shared their lives together, ate together, played together, grew together. However, a slave was still a slave, and the story of Elizabeth's experience shows that mistreatment challenged the narrative. In an act of anger and perceived impertinence, Hannah went to strike Lizzie with a shovel that had been sitting in the kitchen fire. Elizabeth saw what was happening, stepped into the middle to protect her sister, and took a harsh blow on the arm. She was burned, wounded, and scarred. Elizabeth made up her mind...she did not want to be a slave...anymore. Bett would wait and make a move when the time was right. In the meantime, she shamed Hannah Ashley whenever a visitor or guest inquired about the egregious wound and eventual scar, telling them to "ask missus".
Theodore Sedgwick was an attorney. He and John Ashley knew one another and were intimately connected, having worked on the Sheffield Declaration mentioned earlier. Elizabeth knew both very well. In 1780, the Declaration of Independence was again read aloud in a Sheffield church to celebrate the July 4th anniversary and festivities. Elizabeth was there, and she was listening. This, along with all the talk of liberty and freedom she heard and witnessed through the years, Elizabeth approached Sedgwick questioning why was she a slave when the Declaration she had just heard recited said that all men where created equal and were free. Theodore Sedgwick didn't have a good answer. Swayed by Elizabeth's argument, he agreed to represent her in bringing a case and suing for manumission and the suit was filed in May of 1781, just as the last major battles of the American Revolution were coming to a close. Her attorneys were the above mentioned Theodore Sedgwick and Mr. Tapping Reeve of Litchfield Connecticut, both well respected, legal minds of the day (Reeve would go on found the first law school in America, Litchfield Law School, training the next generation of lawyers who were bound to face even more difficult questions of slavery). Elizabeth's owner and Elizabeth's lawyer seemed to have had no animosity towards one another over the lawsuit. She won the case. Bett gaining her freedom, and the freedom of another, a man named Brom, presumably another slave owned by Ashley. Along with freedom, both received damages totaling thirty shillings. In addition, Ashley was levied the Court fees of five pound, fourteen shillings and four pence...a tremendous sum for the time. Elizabeth did not seem bitter towards her former owner, continuing to respect and refer to him in a kind, familiar way. As for Hannah, she would only refer to her as Mistress, with cold formality, devoid of any fondness.
Elizabeth had won her freedom, and took the last name...Freeman. Elizabeth Freemen, in her loyalty to Sedgwick, moved in with his family and became family. Much of what we know about her was recorded by one of the Sedgwick daughters, Catherine, who loved Elizabeth dearly. As she grew into old age, Elizabeth, or "Mumbet" as she came to be known, was devoted to the Sedgwicks, protecting both its members and its wealth from those who wished harm. During Shay's Rebellion, she hid the Sedgwick family silver in her chest of drawers and challenged the rebels who barged into the home to "search the old nigger's chest"...embarrassing them and keeping them from searching her belongings by throwing back the pejorative presumably used by them towards her.
October 18th of 1829 saw Elizabeth Freeman take her last breath. Her ideas and her acumen had singlehandedly ended slavery in Massachusetts, setting into caselaw that which would free the former northern colonies of this institution. While not the end, it was the beginning of.
And that brings us to a virtually unknown French aristocrat...
In the 1790s, as the bloody revolution in France turned from the ideals of fraternity to the terrors of beheadings, one particular Duke, François Alexandre Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, was travelling in America and formulating what would become his tome of a book, Travels through the United States of North America. It is from volume three that we discover the plea set down by Elizabeth's counsel: "That no antecedent law had established slavery, and that the laws which seemed to suppose it were the offspring of error in the legislators, who had no authority to enact them", and "That such laws, even if they had existed, were annulled by the new constitution." No where else has this information been found. There was no written record of it kept. Thankfully, this French nobleman recorded it, giving a clear picture of what Elizabeth, Brom, Sedgwick and Reeve were fighting for. When interviewed by the Duke, Sedgewick, now a U.S. Senator for Massachusetts, unintentionally made sure that his fight, and the language behind it, was secured.
Elizabeth Freeman..."Bett"..."Mumbet", was laid to rest in the Sedgwick family section of the Stockbridge Cemetery, surrounded by those she loved, and those who loved her. The question of slavery, never solved or resolved unanimously, and never reconciled with the founding principles, continued to plague the United States for another generation. It was eventually rectified, and codified in the wake of a bloody struggle, the issue decided with the blood of over a half million.
Elizabeth Freeman..."Bett"..."Mumbet", was laid to rest in the Sedgwick family section of the Stockbridge Cemetery, surrounded by those she loved, and those who loved her. The question of slavery, never solved or resolved unanimously, and never reconciled with the founding principles, continued to plague the United States for another generation. It was eventually rectified, and codified in the wake of a bloody struggle, the issue decided with the blood of over a half million.
Elizabeth Freeman, ca. 1811
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No Author. (2022, April 11) "Mumbett" (manuscript draft), by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, 1853. Massachusetts Historical Society. https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=547&pid=15
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, F. (1800). Travels through the United States of North America, vol.3. T. Gillet. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Travels_Through_the_United_States_of_Nor/aitehkG9knUC?hl=en&gbpv=0
Swan, J. (1990, March). The Slave Who Sued For Freedom. American Heritage. https://www.americanheritage.com/slave-who-sued-freedom#1