Somerset v. Stewart: English Court Rules Slavery Unsupported by Common Law, Sending Shockwaves to Colonies

In June 1772, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ruled in Somerset v. Stewart that Charles Stewart, a Boston customs official, could not forcibly remove James Somerset — a man he claimed to own — from England against his will. Somerset had been enslaved in Virginia and Massachusetts, brought to England, escaped, been recaptured, and was about to be shipped to Jamaica when abolitionist Granville Sharp obtained his habeas corpus hearing. Mansfield carefully narrowed his holding, but the decision was popularly interpreted on both sides of the Atlantic as declaring slavery illegal on English soil. The ruling sent immediate tremors through American slave-owning colonies: if English soil conferred freedom, colonial enslavers feared the legal logic spreading. For enslaved people in the colonies, the ruling was electrifying news. Some would invoke Somerset directly in freedom petitions in Massachusetts within months. It also hardened the resolve of Virginia planters to resist British authority — partly from fear that British rule might ultimately threaten slavery itself.