Little-known History ~ Abolitionist voters in Massachusetts, 17 years before the 13th amendment, proposed a bill: denounce slavery or secede from the Union.

When I found this document accidentally during a family ancestry search, I felt heartened. In these days of racial discord, it’s nice to see evidence of people who always thought slavery a horror and fought hard to destroy it. I’d never heard before of any bills proposing a state secede unless slavery was abolished, have you?

Sadly, the bill did not pass. Yet it inspires me to see seven names connected with my family tree (Nickerson, Doane, and Robbins). Grandpa’s middle name was Robbins; his mother’s parents were Robbins and Nickerson. Perhaps some of your own ancestors are in this list of signers.

I know we can just as easily find dark histories buried in our family trees, but we can at least be proud of these brave people who signed this in 1848. And surely to get to the point of creating a bill, they must have been fighting slavery long before.

Taking a closer look in the document itself, with eight parts, I-VIII, we see slavery declared:

“a covenant with the death, and an agreement with hell”.

The proposed bill decried that as long as the Commonwealth consented to slavery, the government would be “morally and politically responsible for all the cruelties and horrors of the slave system.” The bill also requested, in near-poetic and faith-filled words:

“a peaceful SECESSION FROM THE AMERICAN UNION, for some or all of the following reasons”:

I. “Because a portion of the citizens of this Commonwealth, on account of the color of the skin which it has pleased an All-Wise Creator to bestow upon them, are not permitted to visit the Southern States, under penalty of fine, imprisonment, or ENSLAVEMENT FOR LIFE….” (capitals are within the document itself).

This passage also decried those:

“whose chief business is to plunder the poor and defenseless, and to trade in slaves and the souls of men.”

I urge you to zoom in on that document to read it in full.

I was reminded of this document today when I read a blog post by Lori Benton, in Southern Writers Magazine: A Good Few: Those Who Resisted Slavery Well Before the Civil War.

How I found this unusual, unpassed bill: I’d simply clicked on one of the little waving green “clue” leaves connected to a specific ancestor in my tree. As you can see, you can find far more than birth, death and census records there. And (as I mentioned in my post, Calculating Characters) documents can reveal stories and personalities. Digging deep, asking questions, and noticing small details can prompt new thoughts for writers of family history, biographies, or historical fiction.

Also, you may recall in my post A 1915 Yearbook Shows Teen Life 105 Years Ago that vintage yearbooks are also a gold mine for finding fun details!

Eager for more tidbits on exploring history? SUBSCRIBE (or follow me in your WordPress Reader, if you, too have a blog). And let me know your thoughts! What have you discovered lately or are curious about?