Thinking Back on Charlottesville to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society

(Photo Credit: Mississippi State University Photo Library, Mulatto Orphan, 1865, Richmond, Virginia)

Marking the first anniversary of the “Unite the Right” violence in Charlottesville, it is worth a moment to think back on a slavery case from 1836—a case that made national headlines. That case featured liberals who thought very much like liberals today.

The case was COMMONWEALTH v. THOMAS AVES (Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, March Term, 1836).

Mary Aves Slater of New Orleans went to Boston in 1836 to visit Thomas Aves, her father. She brought with her a six-year-old girl named Med who, under Louisiana law, was considered the property of Slater’s husband, Samuel Slater.

Members of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society learned that an enslaved girl was staying in Boston. They hired attorneys to secure Med’s freedom.

A writ of habeas corpus was served on Thomas Aves, the owner of the house where Med was staying. It was served in the name of a male abolitionist, Levin H. Harris, because women were strongly discouraged from filing lawsuits.

On August 21, 1836, the case was brought before Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Shaw discussed several precedents in international law, including the British case of Somerset v. Stewart (1772), and the abolishment of slavery in Massachusetts. The only people who could be treated as slaves in Massachusetts, he reasoned, were fugitive slaves, and then only because the U.S. Constitution specifically required it.

Therefore, Med had become free as soon as her alleged owner voluntarily brought her to Massachusetts. He cited several cases demonstrating that even in Southern states it was understood that a slave became free when voluntarily brought to a free state.

Commonwealth v. Aves was later used as a precedent in other Northern states. Connecticut used it in Jackson v. Bulloch (1837); New York and Pennsylvania used it in legislation declaring that slaves became free when brought to those states; and Ohio courts began using it in 1841. By the start of the Civil War, every Northern state other than Indiana, Illinois, and New Jersey granted freedom automatically to any slave brought within its borders.

Med was placed in the custody of the abolitionist women, while her mother and siblings remained enslaved in New Orleans.