In 1780, as the War for Independence raged throughout North America, a crier standing in the central square of Sheffield, Massachusetts, a small town in the western part of the former colony, read from the state’s newly enacted constitution. When he came to Article 1 he clamored, “All Men are born Free and Equal,” a rousing cheer rose from those in attendance. All were galvanized by the prospect of a new government; for the people, by the people, a new age of freedom, liberty for all. All that is, except the lone African American slave lost among the sea of white faces.
Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it.
Elizabeth Freeman as told to Catherine Maria Sedgwick
Known at the time as Mumbet, Mum Bett, or just plain Bett, the words proved shallow. Though she could not read or write, Bett understood the cruel irony. That of a new nation, claiming freedom for all, while continuing to force twenty percent of its population to live as mere property of another. While those among the crowd spoke of severing the shackles of British ‘slavery’, enjoying the inherent rights so gloriously spelled out in the newly ratified constitution, a fury rose from within Bett. As later stated by those who wrote of her actions, the very next day, she literally marched five miles to the home of prominent lawyer and statesman, Theodore Sedgwick. She stood in Sedgwick’s parlor and demanded a full accounting for the blatant hypocrisy adopted in the state’s new constitution. Bett, born into slavery, having lived as such for nearly forty years, wished to sue the state to fulfill its promise of freedom for all within its borders.
Associate Professor Margaret Washington, Cornell University, spoke with PBS for their 2021 Black History Month Episode fifteen titled Elizabeth Mum Bett Freedom. “If we can imagine this woman,” Washington said, “this slave woman, saying, ‘Well, if everybody is created equal, then that includes me, too,’ and challenging the state government on this issue—it was acts like that, that forced the Massachusetts legislature to look long and hard at the whole contagion of liberty.”
Interestingly, the one Bett turned to was also seeped in irony. He, along with Colonel Judge John Ashley, Bett’s owner, had helped pen the Sheffield Declaration in 1773. It had become the model for the Declaration of Independence in 1776; stating 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.” Sedgwick, like Ashley, was also a slaveowner.
Yet Sedgwick took the case. Why would he do so? A case that could quite possibly overturn slavery, which was deemed a hardship by mainly wealthy slaveowners; men like Sedgwick, those who owned the estimated two point two percentage of the state’s overall bonded population, far lower than most colonies. David Levinson, co-author along with Emilie Pipe of One Minute a Free Woman, a book written about Elizabeth Freeman, states that Sedgwick didn’t oppose slavery because he thought it wrong. He did so because he feared that any lack of cohesion within Massachusetts slave owners, and the growing abolitionist movement, mainly in the Boston area, could damage the more important fight for independence. “Slavery was a very contentious issue in Massachusetts,” said Levinson, “and he [Sedgwick] felt it was causing political problems—it was a divisive force and he wanted unity.” In a sense, Sedgwick set aside his personal finances for the sake of conscious and country.
Early Life and Recorded Discrepancies
Karri Lee Alexander, Fellow at the National Woman’s History Museum wrote that “Mum Bett was born in Claverack, Columbia County, New York as a slave. Although her exact birthdate is unknown, it is believed that she was born around the year 1744. She grew up on the plantation of Pieter Hogeboom with her younger sister Lizzie. When Hogeboom’s daughter married Colonel John Ashley, he gave Bett and her sister to the new couple.”
Colonel John Ashley, Bett’s owner, was a 1730 graduate of Yale College. He was one of the first settlers in the Sheffield, Massachusetts, area. He built his home in 1735, the year he married Annatie Hogeboom. He eventually owned a grist mill, a cider mill, an ironworks, and more than 3,000 acres. Colonel Ashley commanded a militia in the French and Indian War and assumed various local and state positions, including judge of the county court.
Research of Bett’s early life reveals discrepancies. She could not read or write therefore all we know is through second hand accounts. According to the John Ashley Papers, Archives and Research Center, Sharon, MA, Bett and Lizzie, Bett’s sister, could not have been given to Pieter Hogeboom’s daughter when she married Colonel John Ashley. Annatie (Hogeboom) Ashley married Colonel John Ashley on September 3, 1735 in Claverack, New York, long before Bett’s birth. The papers do not give the date Hogeboom presented Bett, along with Bett’s sister, to his daughter. Several accounts state that by 1746, Bett was present with the Ashleys. If so, Bett would have been a toddler, age two to four, which contradicts most claims that she grew up with the Hogebooms.
Further questions arise as to Bett’s exact birth and family members. According to the Elizabeth Freeman Center, Berkshire, MA, Bett was “Born into slavery in 1742 [not 1744], she was given to the Ashley family of Sheffield, Massachusetts, in her early teens. During her period of enslavement to them, she married and had a child, Betsy.” If this is true, Bett would have been given to Hogeboom’s daughter somewhere around 1755-56. As to a sister, the Freeman Center does not state she had a sister Lizzie, but writes that Bett had a daughter of similar name, Betsy.
Was only Bett given to the Ashley household? Or indeed, Hogeboom gave his daughter two slaves; perhaps instead of a sister, a young teen mother and infant named Betsy or even Lizzie? Or did Bett give birth while enslaved with the Ashleys? Perhaps she never gave birth, and the Lizzie spoken of was truly a sister. What was certain, Bett resided with the Ashley’s along with a family member, either as their sister or mother.
Cruel Environment
No matter the level of cruelty, there can be no ‘caring’ environment when one person is the property of another. It was well known that Annatie Ashley, John’s wife, was often spiteful and at times violent toward the family’s slaves. Novelist Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who later grew up under Bett’s care, wrote of an episode while Bett was a slave to the Ashley family. In 1780, the same year that Bett went to Theodore Sedgwick to file suit against the state, Annatie had a violent confrontation that resulted in Bett severely injured. As Catharine recorded in her biography, Annatie yanked an iron shovel from the oven and was about to bring it down upon Lizzie (who historians believe was either Freeman’s daughter or sister). Bett threw herself in front of Lizzie and took the blow. The scalding shovel, still covered in red hot coals, sliced so deep into Freeman’s arm, it struck bone. Catherine wrote that Bett would carry the scar for the rest of her life, but would later point out, “Madam never again laid her hand on Lizzie.”
Bett’s Case Against the State
By 1780, nearly thirty enslaved people had sued the state for their freedom. Their cases were based on an individual slave’s right to prosecute the men who owned them, requiring that the slaveowner proved lawful ownership. These suits weighed heavy on a variety of technicalities, such as fraudulent promises of freedom or an illegal purchase. Bett’s case was different. She did not seek an individual’s liberty from slavery through technicalities that were compounded by legal ramifications, but instead sought the release of all the state’s slaves, calling into account the entire existence of slavery as illegal under the new state’s constitution. In other words, she was not just saying that her slavery was unjust, but that all slavery was unjust.
Theodore Sedgwick and another attorney, Tapping Reeve, took the case after conferring with several other lawyers in the region. They decided to use Bett’s suit as a ‘test case’ to determine if slavery was constitutional under the newly legislated Massachusetts Constitution. Bett was bright, articulate, both a nurse and midwife, and was well known and respected throughout the community. However, women had limited legal rights in the state’s courts, so a male slave within the Ashley household, named Brom, was added to the suit.
By May of 1781, Sedgwick and Reeve filed what was called a ‘writ of replevin’ with the Berkshire Court of Common Pleas. This meant that seized goods (in this case Bett and Brom) may be provisionally restored to their owner (Bett and Brom themselves) pending the outcome of an action to determine the rights of the parties concerned. The ensuing court case became the ‘trial of the century,’ calling into question not only Massachusetts law, but the entire institution of slavery.
Anderson of the National Woman’s History Museum wrote, “This document ordered Colonel Ashley to release Bett and Brom. The Berkshire Court stated that Bett and Brom were not Colonel Ashley’s legitimate property. However, he refused to release them from his possession. By August 1781, the case went to the County Court of Common Pleas of Great Barrington in the case known as Brom and Bett v. Ashley. During the case, Sedgwick argued that the Massachusetts Constitution outlawed slavery.”
Trial, Verdict, and Ramifications
A jury of twelve local farmers, all men, and all white, ruled in favor of Bett and Brom; that they were not Colonel Ashley’s property. On August 21, 1781, Bett and Brom were immediately set free and each were awarded thirty shillings plus the costs of the trial. Ashley filed an appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court, but dropped his case several months later. This was not for any change of heart by the obstinate judge, but was more likely based on the outcome of the Quock Walker trial.
Quock Walker was an enslaved man who filed for his freedom just prior to Bett’s suit. He was represented by prominent lawyers Levi Lincoln and Caleb Strong. Like previous lawsuits, Walker based his argument on technicalities within the law. Walker had been inherited by his present owner, Nathaniel Jennison, this after the first man who owned Walker, James Caldwell, had died. Jennison had married Caldwell’s widow, thereby claiming rights of ownership of Walker. Walker insisted that Caldwell had verbally promised him freedom when he turned twenty-five. Walker was twenty-eight when Jennison assumed ownership; therefore, Walker fled captivity in April, 1781, when Jennison brutalized him. Jennison caught up with Walker and beat him. Since, according to Walker, Jennison did not legally own him, Walker sued Jennison in criminal court for assault and battery.
In 1783, before a Worcester County jury sitting with the Supreme Judicial Court, Jennison was found guilty. The trial judge, Chief Justice William Cushing, instructed the jury that “perpetual servitude can no longer be tolerated in our government, and…liberty can only be forfeited by some criminal conduct or relinquished by personal consent or contract…” Jennison would be forced to pay £50 for Walker’s damages.
Bett’s case, along with Walker’s, was the death knell for slavery in Massachusetts. Both effectively declared slavery incompatible with the new Massachusetts Constitution. As the honorable Peter W. Agnus Jr. of the Massachusetts Appeal Court noted at the time, these cases, “stand not only as a monument in the history of freedom because they signaled the end of slavery in Massachusetts, but also as a milestone in constitutional history.” In 1790, according to the federal census, Massachusetts no longer had any slaves, effectively becoming the first state to comprehensively abolish slavery (Vermont having been the first state to officially abolish slavery, July 8, 1777; however, the practice of slavery continued in the state for some years afterwards).
Freedom
After the court case, Mum Bett changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman. Ashley asked Freeman to return to his household as a paid servant, but she refused and instead went to work for Sedgwick. She was employed as a resident governess to Sedgwick’s seven children; four boys and three girls (another son had died in infancy). She was also a self-employed nurse and midwife. As the children grew up and eventually moved on, Freeman saved enough to buy her own house in Stockbridge, twenty years after acquiring her freedom. Her skills as a healer, midwife, and nurse remained in high demand as she became known by the affectionate name, Mumbet.
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who Freeman helped raise, became one of the country’s most notable female novelists of her time. Much of what we know about Freeman is from her writings. In her autobiography, Catharine Sedgwick referred to Elizabeth Freeman multiple times and reflected upon the influence that this woman had on Sedgwick’s perception of the world. The integrity and pride that Freeman possessed regarding her own personal intelligence and understanding of the world was reflected in Sedgwick’s admiration of the woman.
Elizabeth ‘Mumbet’ Freeman died on December 28, 1829 at or about age eighty-five. The Sedgwicks had such a deep respect for Freeman, that she was buried within the Sedgwick family plot, the only non-family member.
Statue to Commemorate Freeman
On Sunday, August 21, 2022, exactly 241 years since Elizabeth won her freedom in court, a bronze statue was unveiled in front of Sheffield’s Old Parish Church in Sheffield, Massachusetts. The statue, cast by renowned sculptor Brian Hanlon, was placed on the property of the First Congregational Church in Sheffield, not far from the Sedgwick home. “We don’t know if Elizabeth Freeman went to the church, but we know [John] Ashley did, and it was common for enslavers to bring enslaved people to look after their children at church,” said Paul O’Brien, president of the Sheffield Historical Society.
State Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli grew up not far from Sheffield in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, yet did not hear Freeman’s story until about twenty years ago. He discovered that many of his colleagues in the Statehouse were also largely in the dark about the significance of her case, which set the legal precedent that essentially ended slavery in Massachusetts. He recently told an Associated Press reporter, “She’s clearly a hidden figure in American history, and I really believe Black history is American history. But unfortunately, Black history is what we haven’t been told and taught.”
Pignatelli was inspired to raise a statue of Freeman last year, 2020, when he attended the unveiling of a statue of Susan B. Anthony in Adams, the Berkshire County community where the suffragist was born. He brought together stakeholders and raised about $280,000, enough money for the roughly eight foot statue, as well as a scholarship fund in Freeman’s honor for area high school students.
Gwendolyn VanSant, the CEO of BRIDGE, an area nonprofit that fosters racial understanding and equity, oversees the scholarships. She called Freeman an icon and a trailblazer: “For me as an African American woman, it’s amazing to be walking in her footsteps.”
Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and his wife, Diane, both residents of the Berkshires had also been instrumental in fundraising and organizational efforts. They were asked to lead Sunday’s statue dedication ceremony. “What I love about the story is that this remarkable woman,” wrote Governor Patrick in an email to NPR, “enslaved, sometimes brutalized, unable to read, listened carefully to the conversation around the table as the men she was serving discussed the concepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as ‘inalienable rights. I love that this powerless woman could imagine these powerful ideas as her own, and could persuade others to test that question. And I love that the Massachusetts courts had the integrity of purpose to take her question seriously.”
Elizabeth Freeman’s gravestone, still present today in the Sedgwick family cemetery, Stockbridge Cemetery, Stockbridge, MA, is inscribed with the following message, “She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal.”
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ARTICLES OF SIMILAR INTEREST ON REVOLUTIONARY WAR JOURNAL
RESOURCE
Blumrosen, Alfred & Ruth G. Blumrosen. Slave Nation: An Unflinching Look at the Racism that Inspired the American Revolution. 2006: Sourcebooks, Naperville, IL.
Pipe, Emilie & David Levinson. One Minute a Free Woman. 2010: Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area, Salisbury, CT.
WEB
PBS Video “Elizabeth Mum Bett Freeman” Black History Month, Episode 15, 2021
Anderson, Kerri Lee. “Elizabeth Freeman”. National Woman’s History Museum
Spectre, Miriam B. “Colonel John Ashley’s Papers” Archives Research Center, Sharon, MA: 2011, Updated 2018.
Elizabeth Freedom Center, Berkshire County Massachusetts. “Elizabeth Freeman”
NPR Vermont Public. “A statue honors a once-enslaved woman who won her freedom in court”