One day in the early summer of 1772, South Carolina planter Henry Laurens was at his London desk amidst business correspondence. He had arrived the previous autumn to enroll his sons in a British school and, in an unofficial capacity, look after the interests of South Carolina, including the colony’s substantial donation to the defense of John Wilkes (Wallace 162–76). But Laurens’s ongoing business interest during that London year was the disposal of an “African cargo,” that is, his financial interest in the slaves on a ship headed for Charles Town in South Carolina. He also had some immediate business in connection with a ship in a London dock. “I have a Negro on board of the Fisher, a very orderly quiet Lad named Andrew Dross. If the Brigantine is sold be so kind as to dispose of him in such a manner, either under Capt. Chisman’s Care, or otherwise as you think best for my interest” (Laurens 8:370).
Laurens was under some pressure to find a quick way to dispose of the young man. The letter was written two weeks before the final decision was expected in the Somerset case, a suit for freedom brought on behalf of an American slave now in England. The case was expected to have reverberations that would address the legality of slaveholding in England, and perhaps even in the British colonies (D. Davis 507). Laurens may also have been concerned about the slave, Robert Scipio, who accompanied his family on the trip. Scipio’s name came up when Laurens broke off from a long letter to Gervais about the arriving slaves to mention the trial in an uncharacteristically jocular tone. “They say Supper is ready, otherwise I was going to tell a long and comical story of a Trial between a Mr. Stuart and his Black man James Somerset, at King’s Bench, for Liberty. My man Robert Scipio Laurens says the Negroes that want to be free here, are Fools. He behav’d a little amiss one day, and I told him I would not be plagued by him. If he did not choose to stay with me to go about his Business. He said he would serve no body else, and was behaved excellently well ever since” (Laurens 8:353).
Trust in Scipio’s devotion notwithstanding, Laurens and his small entourage were out of the country on June 22 when Lord Mansfield, the chief justice of Great Britain’s highest common law court, ruled in favor of the American slave, James Somerset. By August 20, back in London, Laurens’s tone had changed. He was not pleased with the defense attorney. “In my humble opinion he was not an Advocate for his Client, nor was there a word said to the purpose on either side” (Laurens 8:435).
Gervais never did hear the promised “long and comical story”; perhaps at this point Laurens found it less comical. Indeed, the case may have been a personal turning point for the South Carolinian, who three years later was to condemn slaveholding in a famous letter to his son John and be an influence in his son’s subsequent antislavery stance (Hargrove 198–99).
The trial that gave James Somerset his freedom was the first major success for the British abolition movement. It was a victory that was to establish the base of the British abolition movement that over the next fifty years brought unrelenting and finally successful pressure on Great Britain to end its connection to the slave trade in all parts of the world (Klingberg).
James Somerset was African-born and had been purchased in Virginia by a Boston man, Charles Stuart. In 1769, when Stuart traveled to England, Somerset accompanied him as a personal servant, but once in London, he escaped. Stuart ordered him seized and held on board a ship bound for the West Indies, where he was to be sold. The recapture of the slave came to the attention of the Quaker Granville Sharp, who had been searching for a case that would demonstrate what he believed was the illegality of slaveholding in Great Britain. Not only was Sharp interested in purifying English consciences by disallowing slaveholding, the case whetted his long-range ambition for the prohibition of slavery throughout the British colonies. Sharp and his supporters prepared a case that was intended to have far-ranging consequences.
The case was heard in May and June of 1772 before Lord Mansfield in the Court of the King’s Bench (Bauer). Five lawyers had been assembled by Sharp and his abolitionist friends. Counsel for the defendant was underwritten by a group of West Indian planters, who, like the abolitionists, believed the decision would have consequences beyond the freedom of a single slave (Wiecek).
After five days of testimony in a courtroom packed with planters, abolitionists, and Somerset supporters—black and white—Mansfield ruled Somerset must be “discharged,” set free, although not on the basis that slavery was illegal in England, as the abolitionists had argued. Mansfield’s judgment was made on the narrow ledge that Great Britain had no precedent allowing for the forced recapture of an escaped slave outside the country of his or her enslavement. One British press account quoted Mansfield’s final, specific statement: “So high an act of dominion was never in use here; no master was every allowed to take a slave by force to be sold abroad, because he had deserted from his service, or for any other reason whatsoever. We cannot say the cause set forth by this return is allowed or approved by the laws of this kingdom, therefore the man must be discharged” (GM 7/72).
Despite such precise press accounts, it was popularly believed in Great Britain that the decision had ended slavery in England (Shyllon 25). Lord Mansfield was to go down in popular history as the Great Emancipator, despite his subsequent proslavery decisions. Because of the popular understanding, however, the case came to be a liberalizing influence in Great Britain. In contrast, the eventual influence of the case in the United States tended to be negative. Modern American historians have interpreted the decision as playing a major role in the encouragement of fugitive slave legislation in the United States (Finkelman 38–41). British and American scholars agree that confusion has existed in the interpretation of the case from the time of the trial to the present day.
One American historian blames the colonial press for American confusion. Jerome Nadelhaft claims the Boston Gazette “explicitly misinformed” (194) its readers in the version he believes came to dominate the American understanding of the decision. The Gazette reprinted a short paragraph taken from the London Gentleman’s Quarterly. “A correspondent observes, that as Blacks are free now in this country, Gentlemen will not be so fond of bringing them here as they used to be, it being computed there are now about 14,000 blacks in this country” (BG 9/21/72).
In contrast, Nadelhaft cites as accurate another short insertion by the patriot Virginia Gazette. “Yesterday, the Court of King’s Bench gave judgement in the Case of Somerset the Negro, finding that Mr. Stuart, his Master, had not Power to compel him on Board a Ship or send him back to the Plantations, but that the owner might bring an Action of Trover against anyone who shall take the Black into his Service. A great number of Blacks were in Westminster Hall to hear the Determination of the cause and went away greatly pleased” (VG-Purdie and Dixon 8/17/72).
Nadelhaft does not speculate on the reason for the Gazette’s misinformation, but when the paper is viewed as a propaganda organ, it becomes clear that the Gazette had more to gain from the short paragraph of misinformation than from complete coverage. Complete coverage was available from several British sources, newspapers and magazines, used by other colonial newspapers. A study of the coverage of the Somerset decision indicates that the patriot press gave less accurate and shorter coverage to the decision, despite the availability of information, than newspapers that were loyalist in inclination or who had not committed to the patriot cause. The major exception to this pattern was the southern press, whose readers likely had less interest in propagandistic uses of the material than information that might affect their livelihood. The selected use of the Somerset decision by the core elements of the patriot press offers further evidence that the patriot press manipulated the issue of slavery in the American colonies to advance the separation of the colonies from Great Britain.
The most dramatic difference between the coverage of the Boston Gazette and the coverage given to the decision by other newspapers was most apparent in Boston. The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter devoted 2,700 words to the story, including a special supplement, giving readers not only trial coverage but also various short paragraphs of opinion as well—altogether a substantial sampling of what had been published in the British press and certainly meeting the needs of readers who sought a layered understanding of the decision. This pattern of contrast between the Gazette, the fiery propaganda organ, and the News-Letter, the archetype of the traditional newspaper, held true generally, if not absolutely, throughout the colonies. Newspapers that were, or would become, loyalist, and newspapers that were in 1772 already patriot aligned, or would become aligned to the patriot cause, were less accurate on every measure. Patriot-oriented newspapers published fewer words, had fewer insertions, and relied on paragraphs of opinion rather that trial-based coverage. The poorest coverage of all was provided by the most patriot organ of all, the Boston Gazette. The second poorest coverage was provided by Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, a newspaper that rivaled the Gazette for its fiery radicalism. Other newspapers that gave the subject little coverage—William Goddard’s Chronicle, William Bradford’s Pennsylvania Journal, and John Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet—were all newspapers whose editors played important roles as patriot propagandists before and during the Revolution. The single exception to this pattern is Hugh Gaine’s Mercury, which had the same amount of information as the Boston Gazette. The appearance of the Mercury among the patriot propagandists can be best explained in terms of Gaine’s idiosyncratic career that tended to follow what he viewed as the most advantageous winds of the moment. Meantime, the newspapers that gave the Somerset decision the fairest and most complete coverage is a mixed group. The two newspapers who gave the decision the most number of words in the most number of insertions are the Boston News-Letter (2, 711 words in four insertions) and the Boston Post-Boy (3, 705 words in four insertions) and are traditionally associated with the Tory camp (Bradley 6).
The variety of stories that were available to the colonial printers is illustrated by the Post-Boy coverage. The first item was published July 27 and presented the opening arguments from the May 14 court appearance. Another item following this insertion addressed the possible effects of the decision— one of the few articles that appeared in the colonial press to do so: “A correspondent says, this cause pregnant with consequences, extremely detrimental to those gentlemen whose estates chiefly consist in slaves; It would be a means of ruining our African trade; if it should be determined in favor of the negroes, we are apprehensive their black gentry will visit us in too great an abundance, inter-marry with our women and thus we shall become a nation of mulattoes. Some method must be taken to limit or entirely prohibit the importation of negroes.”
On August 3, the newspaper published an antislavery letter from a subscriber who had been prompted to write because of the trial. The slave trade was “an infamous bartering of Human Flesh and Blood.” On August 31, the newspaper gave the trial conclusion in a version that included Lord Mansfield’s final remarks. And on October 5 the Post-Boy reprinted a piece from England’s Gentleman’s Magazine that called for recompense of planters whose slaves were to be set free by “the general law of England.”
Like the News-Letter, it is difficult to determine a stance in the coverage by the Post-Boy. Readers could find support for whatever their position or make a choice on the basis of information presented. The writer of an article published in January 1773 and taken from London’s Public Advertiser reluctantly concluded that slavery was acceptable, but it was a decision that the writer made uneasily on the basis of his belief that slavery by Europeans was less severe than the slavery imposed by Africans on each other.
The Providence Gazette, considered a patriot newspaper, also gave Somerset full coverage. Three of the insertions were long summaries of the trial (PG 2/17; 7/25; 9/5/72). The newspaper also carried the essay included in the PostBoy, “A correspondent says this cause seems pregnant with consequences” (PG 8/1/72), as well as the article suggesting compensation for planters (PG 10/10/72). On balance, there may have been more proslavery than antislavery sentiment in the Providence Gazette, but the inclusion of the trial testimony places the proslavery discussion within a context that encouraged examination of both sides of the issue, something that shorter coverage did not provide.
The Essex Gazette of Salem, Massachusetts, is also considered a patriot newspaper. It opened the year with a front-page attack on Lord Mansfield written by the British essayist “Junius” (EG 1/7/72) followed by an imaginary conversation between a ruler and subject on the topic of American independence. “If the present absurd system of policy is passed, I believe a very few years will terminate her authority here” (EG 3/3/72). The Essex Gazette expressed the patriot point of view but without the hyperbole of the Boston Gazette or Massachusetts Spy. Its patriot interests, however, did not preclude wideranging coverage of Somerset. It used the “pregnant with consequences” commentary published in the Post-Boy, but the Essex Gazette also published a letter that predicted the consequences would not be ruinous.
But it is false that our Colonies would be ruined by the abolition of Slavery. It might occasion a stagnation of business for a short time but it would produce many happy effects. It is slavery which is permitted in America that has hindered it from becoming so soon populated as it would otherwise have been. Set the Negroes free and in a few generations this vast and fertile continent would be crowded with inhabitants. Learning arts, and every thing would flourish in America, and instead of being inhabited by wild Beasts and Savages. It would be peopled by Philosophers and men. (EG 8/25/72)
On the Somerset issue, at least, both of these patriot newspapers had more in common with the conservative and Tory Post-Boy than with the radical leader, the Boston Gazette.
The New Hampshire Gazette, which also provided a fair range of material, finally aligned itself with the patriots but was cautious in 1772. However, although the Providence Gazette and the Essex Gazette, providers of more news on the issue than the Boston Gazette, did not participate in the prewar propaganda to the extent of other newspapers, their Whig influences were apparent in 1772. John Carter was described by Thomas as the patriot’s “staunch supporter” (Thomas 323). Samuel Hall, printer of the Essex Gazette, although nephew and apprentice to Daniel Fowle, who was no friend to the Adams circle since his unhappy days with the Independent Advertiser, was characterized as the patriot’s “firm friend” (Thomas 178).
Two southern newspapers also are found among newspapers that gave the most complete coverage of the Somerset decision. The South-Carolina Gazette used only one insertion, but it was a lengthy one, running 1, 400 words. The account was concerned with the fourth day of the trial, that included the argument made by Stuart’s counsel that Somerset was bound by the terms of simple contract but included an equal amount of space to Somerset’s counsel, who argued that municipal law should take precedence over foreign laws. The majority of the article was concerned with Lord Mansfield’s remarks. “The decision, as a matter of law must be governed strictly therefore. It cannot accommodate itself to present conveniences; it must be governed by its own intrinsic tendencies” (SCG 8/13/72). The Gazette did not use the conclusion of the trial, but even the one insertion presented the trial in terms of its complications, formality, and importance, characteristics that could not be approached by use of the shorter, anecdotal items. Similarly, another lengthy account carried by the Tory South-Carolina and American General Gazette included Lord Mansfield’s involved summary that clearly showed his reluctance to rule, as the correspondent noted, “Lord Mansfield seems to dread from judgement in favor of the Negro” (SCAMG 8/3/72).
In contrast to the South Carolina accounts, the Virginia newspapers carried news of the decision by way of British accounts, particularly those taken from the Middlesex Journal, which viewed the trial and the subsequent decision as an example of British liberality (Nadelhaft 193). Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette told the story in five insertions (VG-Purdie and Dixon 5/7; 6/4; 7/23; 8/20; 8/27/72), including antislavery comments reprinted from the British source: “If Negroes are to be Slaves on Account of Colour, the next Step will be to enslave every Mulatto in the Kingdom, then all the Portuguese, next the French, then the brown complexioned English, and so on till there be one man left, which will be the man of the palest complexion in the kingdom” (VG-Purdie and Dixon 8/20/72). William Rind’s Virginia Gazette, the favored Whig newspaper, reprinted a two-thousand-word essay taken from Great Britain’s Gentleman’s Magazine, “Considerations on the Negro Cause” (VG-Rind 11/12/72), which included Lord Mansfield’s comment, “So high an act of dominion was ever in use here,” that provided for Somerset’s freedom on the basis of lack of positive law legal but made it less clear that the decision did not outlaw slavery in England. Whether by accident or design, Virginians reading the accounts of the trial by way of the conduit of liberal British thought might be led to beliefs not so very different as those promulgated by the Boston Gazette in its short insertion.
Newspapers that gave the Somerset coverage a few hundred words rather than a few dozen or a few thousand, the extremes between the Boston Gazette and the Tory newspapers and the southern newspapers, were newspapers that were not early leaders of the Revolutionary cause. Solomon Southwick of the Newport Mercury, which provided 870 words on the decision over three insertions (NM 8/3; 9/7; 9/14/72), was a strong patriot once the war had commenced (Thomas 254), although he did not participate in the prerevolutionary propagandizing to nearly the same extent as the core patriot printers. By 1772 there was ample evidence, including the coverage given to the Somerset trial, that Southwick was in the patriot camp. The Mercury, indeed, published the misinformation that was to appear in the Boston Gazette two weeks later, “as blacks are now free in this country” (NM 9/7/72), even though the longer essay containing that paragraph had been published in other colonies.
The few words the Boston Gazette gave to the Somerset decision appeared in a newspaper routinely written in hyperbole and focused on the British menace. But it was not until September 21, 1772—after a summer of following the scandal and trial of the Queen of Denmark—that the Gazette chose to mention the Somerset case, opening and closing its coverage with the paragraph already quoted and carrying a June 21 dateline from London. It was not likely that the Gazette devoted a tardy paragraph to the story because the decision was considered unimportant or already known. The brevity of the item and its late appearance, coming at a time when readers may have already heard of the case from other colonists or from the News-Letter, was one of the Boston Gazette’s techniques for manipulating reader response.
The phrase “As Blacks are free now in this country,” for example, was not only inaccurate, its uncompromising tone indicated there was no possibility of any other interpretation. Moreover, the wording may have suggested to the Gazette reader that the British had not given the American colonists a second thought on an issue that was obviously of importance to them. The phrase provided no opportunity for readers to examine the basis for the decision or consider its possible consequences. But, as in other items about blacks and slaves, this lack of information on an issue of obvious interest may have served to increase the impact of the story. Given no information on the obvious questions, readers could only turn to other sources, including other newspapers, of course, but also word-of-mouth, rumor, and personal biases, which may have been the preferred communication network for readers seeking support for entrenched attitudes.
The paragraph, in fact, did more than misinform readers about the Somerset decision. Its very brevity and tone reinforced the Gazette rhetoric that Great Britain paid little attention to colonists’ concerns on any front, even one as pertinent as slavery. The brevity and tone of the article did not indicate the range of arguments, the formality of the court setting, Lord Mansfield’s reluctance to rule on the issue, or, indeed, the narrowness of the decision. Instead, Gazette readers saw the subject treated by British authority in what must have appeared a cavalier manner. While the writer noted that the decision might affect the “14,000 blacks in this country,” a colonial reader could not be blamed for wondering why the British writer had not addressed the effect of the decision on the many more thousands of slaves in the British colonies.
The anecdotal approach was also primarily used by John Holt, the printer/ editor of the New-York Journal. Holt’s three references to the trial contain one trial-based story, a minor one, however, having to do with a postponement. However, Holt’s readers did learn that the case was not to be dismissed lightly “as this was thought by the court a very important decision, it was postponed ’till towards the end of the term” (NYJ 4/30/72). The second reference, which implicated the decision, reinforced the theme of importance and acknowledged that the decision would have impact on the British colonies. “The late decision with regard to Somerset the Negro, a correspondent assures us, will occasion a greater ferment in American (particularly in the islands) than the Stamp Act itself; for slaves constituting the great value of (West Indian) property (especially) and appeals from America in all cases of a civil process to the mother country, every pettifogger will have his neighbor entirely at his mercy, and by applying to the King’s Bench at Westminster leave the subject at Jamaica or Barbadoes wholly without a hand to cultivate his plantation” (NYJ 8/27/72).
The third and final reference directly reported the trial decision, but without any summary of the trial testimony. Holt chose a colorful, eyewitness account of the final day.
The great Negro cause was determined a few days ago, and the consequence was that the Negro obtained his freedom. The poor fellow was present in the court at the decision, as were likewise a great many blacks, all of them, as soon as Lord Mansfield had delivered the opinion of the court, came forward, and bowed first to the Judges, then to the bar, with the symptoms of the most extravagant joy. Who can help admiring the genius of that government which thus dispenses freedom all around it? No station or character is above the law, nor is any beneath its protection. The Monarch and the Beggar are alike subject to it. “Pauperum Taberna Require Torres” are equally guarded by it (NYJ 9/3/72).
The piece was obviously written by a sympathetic observer, and the present-day reader may read the account in the spirit in which it was written. But like other reports from the British liberal press, its reception in the colonies may have provoked a less sympathetic reaction. Indeed, Holt may have chosen the piece because it pointed up the British view of slavery that was in direct opposition to the view held by many of his readers. In July, during the period of the Somerset coverage, the Journal carried a lengthy account of an attack of a slave upon his master and the slave’s subsequent execution (NYJ 7/2/72). Since the attacking slave was owned by a local master, the dangers of manumission loomed menacingly close to readers in a colony where slave insurrection composed a large part of collective memory. Holt’s readers may not have been likely to admire “the genius of a government” that placed the white slave owner on the same legal footing as his black slave and, rather than increasing colonial sympathy to the slave, the final Somerset reportage more likely indicated to Holt’s readers how removed in understanding the Mother Country was from her American colonies.
Similarly, William Goddard in the Pennsylvania Chronicle used anecdotal coverage that his readers may have found disturbing. “On Monday near 200 Blacks, with their ladies, had an entertainment at a public house in Westminster” to celebrate the decision, readers learn (PC 8/22/72). For colonial readers, the concept of blacks with their “ladies,” not the “wenches” of the colonial press advertisements, drinking at a public house like white people (and even affording five shillings at the door!) clearly had the ingredients of raising the possibility, spectral to some, of equality. Goddard used no story that was strictly based on the trial in favor of the short paragraph used by the Boston Gazette (PC 8/12/72). Like the New-York Journal, the Chronicle’s Somerset story occurred in the context of danger posed by blacks. Shortly after news of the Somerset celebration an account was published of a West Indian slave who attacked a white man and was subsequently executed—“staked to iron crows and burnt” (PC 9/5/72).
In contrast, the coverage given to Somerset by Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, certainly a fiery patriot organ, has a somewhat different cast than that of the Gazette, Chronicle, or Journal. In February the Spy reprinted an antislavery letter from the Pennsylvania Gazette calling for the education of slaves in order to provide an uplift to their moral life (MS 2/27/72), promoting the notion, of course, that slaves were in need of moral uplift. By the close of the year, two Spy subscribers were involved in a spirited and lengthy debate on the morality of slavery in a series of essays of the kind that were usually found in newspapers associated with a moderate stance (MS 10/1; 10/17/72). A week after the publication of the letter from the Friend to the Oppressed, Thomas reprinted a story from Rhode Island in which a slave, apparently drunk, had beaten his “wench,” set several fires to his master’s property, and finally fallen into a vat of rum and drowned, told in an amused tone (MS 3/5/72). During the Somerset period, Thomas included stories about a “very valuable negro” who had been killed trying to retrieve a portion of meat hanging down a well for cooling (MS 8/31/72). The same edition contained a short item about a slave uprising in Surinam in which two white men were killed. This handful of items in one newspaper managed to encapsulate several colonial attitudes toward slaves—slaves in need of moral uplift, slaves as inept and foolish, and slaves as dangerous. The Spy also contained three references to the trial. The first, at the end of August, even later than the Boston Gazette, is short, but, unlike the item in the Boston Gazette, it is accurate: “Yesterday the Court of King’s Bench gave judgment in the case of Somerset the Negro finding that Mr. Stewart his master had no power to compel him a ship or to send him back to the plantations” (MS 8/27/72).
The second reference is an extract from the same account that had been used by the New-York Journal. “The great Negro cause was determined a few days ago and the consequence was, the Negro obtained his freedom. The poor fellow was present in the court as were like [indecipherable] a great many blacks, all of whom, as soon as Lord Mansfield had delivered the opinion of the court, came forward, and bowed first to the judges, and then to the bar with symptoms of the most extravagant joy” (MS 9/3/72).
Thomas chose to exclude the paean to Great Britain’s fairness of government that had been included in John Holt’s version of the story in the New-York Journal. And one of the few evidences that colonial readers had learned, and were digesting, the decision, came in the Spy. The September front page “open letter” to Lord Mansfield used the trial as a peg: “The late cloud of incense gone up to your name for your righteous determination in the Negro cause, we acknowledge is a wonderful display of your regard to the oath of your office, and incites me to go a little farther in the way of your duty.” Mansfield’s “duty,” according to the essayist, was to give his attention more properly to colonial “enslavement.” “With what colour of right can you emancipate a man taken in war, and sold to me by his captor for a valuable consideration, and yet hold millions in chains for whom you never paid a farthing?” (MS 9/17/72).
Not all patriot printers, or even eventual patriot printers, followed in lockstep to the Boston Gazette. But given the colonial context and the use of British writers who were not addressing American concerns, almost any selection might carry meanings for the colonial American that were not intended by the British writer. John Dunlap, later to be the official printer of the United States Constitution but the young printer of the Pennsylvania Packet in 1772, told the Somerset story in just two insertions. Neither of them was trial-based and neither was accurate because of its anecdotal nature. Both insertions, however, were written in a satirical manner that lent themselves to whatever position held by the reader. The first was a longer version of an item used by Purdie’s Virginia Gazette in which the writer suggested that if slavery was to be a matter of color alone, all would be enslaved except the man of the “palest complexion” (PP 8/3/72). The second item continued the theme of complexion. In a Swiftean tone, the writer surmised that the Somerset case would result in a law that would determine slavery by the darkness of skin, but such an order would be complicated by a companion order requiring slave ships to collect their cargoes from the port of London, not Africa (PP 8/17/72).
The apparent antislavery points in the selections were muddied by heavy-handed efforts to be amusing, possibly useful in providing a middle ground for Dunlap. But neither item served as a doorway to the further discussion of slavery in Dunlap’s newspaper. In the following years, as Dunlap became more closely aligned with the patriot cause, he published nothing more on the subject. His Whig career flourished into the new nation (Teeter, “John Dunlap”).
The Pennsylvania Journal’s William Bradford chose just one item to tell the Somerset story. However, it was a trial-based discussion with an accurate summary of Lord Mansfield’s final comments. Somerset must be discharged, according to the account, because English law contained no particular law that permitted enslavement. Slavery, Mansfield was recorded as telling the court, was not an institution that could be allowed to exist on the basis of general principles but instead had to be supported by specific or “positive law.” Mansfield did not condemn slavery. “The power of a master over his servant is different in all countries, more or less limited or extensive; the exercise of it therefore must always be regulated by the laws of the place where exercised” (PJ 9/2/72). In this account Mansfield gave to the American colonies the same rights as a foreign nation. The account clearly makes the point that his decision was of concern only in Great Britain and did not, as Granville Sharp argued, apply to British colonies because colonial law could not exist contrary to the British law from which it derived its authority.
Although the Somerset coverage was less of a polemic in the Pennsylvania Journal than in the Boston Gazette, the Journah message suggested that the American colonies functioned under separate rules than those of the mother country. But Bradford, at this point, was primarily a follower of the conservative Whig John Dickinson and, like Dickinson, his move to the patriot camp was cautious. Bradford was also connected to Pennsylvania slave trading activities through his ownership of a marine insurance company and was keenly aware of the merchant reaction to efforts to curb the Pennsylvania slave trade (HSP 6). Bradford was neither a supporter of abolition nor an early patriot, but a critic of Parliament’s power over the American colonies as exemplified by Great Britain’s interference in the slave trade. And, as a newspaper that served merchant interests, it is not surprising to see the Somerset coverage embedded in news of the West Indies. Three weeks after the Somerset insertion, in a front-page article, Bradford published a list of restrictions for blacks in the Danish Royal Islands, including a curfew, restrictions on the sale of goods made to whites, and a warning to planters not to care too much “for the preservation for their Negroes” by supplying them lodging or food if fishing was available (PJ 10/2/72).
The Journal’s competitor was the Pennsylvania Gazette, the newspaper associated with Benjamin Franklin, but in this decade under the ownership and management of his former partner, David Hall. Franklin was in London at this point, still lobbying for Pennsylvania to become a royal rather than a proprietary colony. Hall, freed from Franklin’s dominance, had more in common with Bradford and the Journal than the patriot press. Hall published two Somerset items, including a thorough and even-handed summary of the trial arguments. The items also served to portray Mansfield as an Englishman keeping England inviolate from the evils of slavery. “He concluded with hoping that Mr. Stuart and every other man who arrogated such an unjust, in human, and dangerous dominion over a man when in this country would be told that the laws of England would not endure it, nor suffer the free air of this realm to be contaminated with the breath of a slave” (PG 8/12/72). The conclusion of the trial was carried in an “extract from a letter” also carried by the New-York Journal (PG 8/26/72).
Like its competition, the Pennsylvania Journal, Somerset appeared in a context that mitigated against celebratory readings of the decision: advertisements for slaves for sale and slaves wanted (PG 9/23; 10/21/72), news of a severe and devastating uprising in Surinam that had not been quelled (PG 10/7/72), and news of a hurricane in St. Croix, which had resulted in martial law that, like those in the Danish Royal Islands, placed severe restrictions on black inhabitants (PG 10/7/72).
The Pennsylvania Gazette’s items point up that any news of Somerset was surrounded by evidence of colonial slavery, and, alongside that, seeming evidence that the notion of freed slaves was incomprehensible in the colonial setting. Moreover, the use of the British press in a desultory way to report the decision had little chance of avoiding a British self-congratulatory air that could not have been well received by American colonists, whatever their politics. The British press was generally in favor of the freedom for Somerset, seeing his freedom as a symbol for what was considered the free air of England. For some British writers the decision appeared to restore confidence in British liberalism at a time when the British public was learning of the atrocities of the famous British tea company, the East India Company, against the native peoples. “The name of an Englishman till of late was admired, as comprehending all that was humane and generous, over the whole world; but now it has become more odious in Asia that even that of the Spaniard was formerly in Mexico and Peru” (CC 1/5/73). Indeed, one rationale for the Boston Tea Party was that it was against the corrupt East Indian Tea Company that was being protected by Parliament.
However, the existence of slavery in the British colonies obviously did not fit with this British self-congratulatory moralism that ignored British responsibility for the establishment of slavery in its colonies or its recalcitrance in ending the slave trade. By focusing on the decision as an affirmation of Great Britain’s free air, the British news reports served to point up the differences between the countries. Any coverage less than the full trial-based stories emphasized British nationalism and the exclusion of the American colonies. The fuller newspaper accounts, like that in the Drapers’ Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter or John Green and Joseph Russell’s Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, were not only more informative, but, simply by sheer weight of words, tended to mute British self-congratulation and unwittingly served their Tory alignment by quieting colonial irritation.
From a patriot point of view, the truncated coverage served the cause in several ways, emphasizing the irritant factor of the British coverage, making available large spaces of silence to be filled by rumor, helping the spread of misinformation, and by giving such short shrift to the subject, indicating that the British were not so concerned about how the decision would affect the American colonies. Given all the material that was available to the colonial printer from British sources and from other colonial newspapers, the coverage of the issue by the core patriot press can only lead to the conclusion that information on the issue was manipulated.
By 1772, Adams was building an intercolonial movement that avoided direct confrontation on the issue of slavery. Yet to ignore the issue of slavery was also to ignore the American antislavery movement. Outside of the Gazette, antislavery essayists were increasingly drawing attention to the incompatibility of calls for American liberty and the existence of American slavery. While there were those patriots who sought to bring antislavery under the patriot banner, the Adams modus operandi prevailed. The Gazette continued to use silence in face of continuing public and legislative calls for abolition. From the point of view of a propagandist, silence was a canny choice. A strategist might observe that sometimes simply holding your cards is the best way to play a hand.