Massachusetts Enslaved People File Freedom Petitions Invoking Revolutionary Language

In January 1773, a group of enslaved men in Massachusetts — including Felix Holbrook — submitted a formal petition to the Governor and General Court invoking the revolutionary language of natural rights and liberty to demand their freedom. The petition read in part: 'the endearing name of father is common to all mankind, we have a right to our own children.' Additional petitions followed throughout 1773 and 1774. The petitioners explicitly cited the contradiction between colonial revolutionary rhetoric about liberty and the practice of enslaving people. These petitions were among the first formal legal challenges to slavery in America grounded in natural rights philosophy rather than religious or technical arguments. Though the Massachusetts legislature failed to act on the petitions, they established the legal and rhetorical groundwork for the freedom suits that would succeed after 1780 and for the Quock Walker cases that effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts.