Somerset v. Stewart: British Court Rules Slavery Has No Legal Basis in England

Lord Mansfield ruled in London that James Somerset, an enslaved man brought from Virginia by his enslaver, could not be forcibly returned to the colonies. The ruling held that slavery was not supported by English common law and that no enslaved person could be forcibly removed from England. The case did not abolish slavery in British colonies but energized abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic. American slaveholders viewed it with alarm; enslaved people in the colonies learned of it rapidly. Somerset himself was freed.