of the United States are to be sent out of the State.” Of the persons expelled under this law, twenty-one were from Connecticut.7 Some of these were undoubtedly freemen, since during this period one frequently finds on record in Connecticut applications to selectmen to “free the master from responsibility in case of emancipated slaves.”8
An emancipation movement struggling to be born; a restless urge for freedom among those enslaved—these were the twin sources from which the Underground Railroad arose, and both were evident in Connecticut in the early 1770’s. It was a time of ferment; new ideas of liberty and the rights of man were in the air. Antislavery pamphlets and books were beginning to appear from the pens of such writers as John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and Thomas Paine.9 Very soon Thomas Jefferson was to draft a document stating, among other things, that “all men are created equal”; and already there were those who, in general agreement with such views, were prepared to speak for complete freedom and equality for Connecticut’s 6500 slaves. One such was Aaron Cleveland of Norwich, hatter, poet, legislator, “minister of the gospel and tribune of the people,” who in 1775 published an antislavery poem, and who has been recognized as the first writer in Connecticut “to call in question the lawfulness of slavery and to argue against it.”10 This position was too advanced for the time, but in the previous year the General Assembly had taken a first halting step toward abolition in a measure providing that “no Indian, negro, or mulatto slave shall at any time hereafter be brought or imported into this State, by sea or land.” Thereafter, the courts were “inclined towards the support of liberal interpretations of the antislavery laws.”11
After the Revolution, that basic lesson in freedom, the General Assembly moved further toward universal emancipation. A law of 1784 provided that no Negro or mulatto born in Connecticut after March 1 of that year was to be held as a slave after reaching the age of twenty-five. This law was soon followed by further measures in the same direction. An enactment of May, 1792, gave teeth to the 1784 law by defining penalties for its violation; anyone who removed from Connecticut a slave who was entitled to freedom at twenty-five would be punished by “a fine of $334, half of which should go to the plaintiff and half to the State.” The same session of the Assembly also enacted that all slaves between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five were entitled to freedom. A measure of 1797 took an additional step, decreeing that no Negro or mulatto born after August of that year should remain a slave after reaching the age of twenty-one. But complete and final emancipation did not come to Connecticut until 1848.
Meanwhile, the state’s slaves had been busy emancipating themselves by direct action, sometimes through their sole effort, sometimes with the help of their friends—or their country’s enemies. The British were perfectly aware that some damage could be done the American cause by encouraging slaves to escape. Indeed, as early as 1768, a New London citizen of “probity” heard three English officers agree that “if the Negroes were made freemen, they should be sufficient to subdue those damn’d Rascals.”12 In the general unrest and the near presence of British troops, slaves saw a handy avenue to freedom. One is known to have escaped from his owner in Colchester to the enemy lines in 1776, and in the same year three other runaways found refuge on a British vessel in New Haven harbor.13
Of those who made the break for freedom alone, many—unlike their Southern counterparts of later decades—seem to have helped themselves to their masters’ wardrobes or other valuable articles. Thus a fugitive from Stamford ran off with a felt hat, a gray cut wig, a lapelled vest, several pairs of stockings, two pairs of shoes, a small hatchet, and a violin.14 A Hartford runaway of 1777 also took his master’s violin, presumably for his entertainment along the way; while the owner of another violin-stealing fugitive shrugged off his loss with the remark that the thief was a “miserable performer.”15
Not all the runaways in Connecticut at this time were friendless, however. A classic example was set by citizens of Hebron and the vicinity, when seven or eight men from South Carolina attempted to kidnap a slave there in 1788. There was hardly a man in the neighborhood, it is reported, who failed to resist the abduction; and after a council of war among residents of Hebron, East Haddam, and East Hampton, the Negro was rescued and set free.16
Ten years later, in the northwest corner of the state, citizens of Norfolk rallied with equal wholeheartedness to the support of another runaway. This was James Mars, who in 1798 was only eight years of age. He lived in Canaan, and by the provisions of the law of 1784 his legal freedom was just seventeen years away. However, his owner—a Mr. Thompson, a minister and a strong pro-slavery spokesman—planned to take James and his family to Virginia, where he would sell them to a planter. In what was to have been his last sermon to the people of Canaan, Thompson said that his chattels were fine slaves and would bring him at least two thousand dollars in the Southern market.
James’ father, however, had other ideas. Though he was only “a slave without education,” yet he was a vigilant man; and as a father, he was naturally greatly concerned for the welfare of his wife, his daughter, and his two sons. He saw and heard much, kept it to himself—and planned his family’s escape. He knew there was some ill feeling between Canaan and Norfolk, so to Norfolk they would go. Accordingly, he hitched up the parson’s team in the dark of night, put his few possessions and his family aboard the wagon, and set out. The trip was not without incident— among other things, they ran afoul of someone’s woodpile in the darkness—but they reached Norfolk well before daylight. There they found refuge in Pettibone’s tavern, whose owner, like his descendants, was a friend of fugitive slaves. He welcomed the Mars family, helped them unload, and gave them a resting place for the balance of the night. But the tavern obviously could not be a permanent refuge. Of what happened next, James wrote many years later:
It was soon known in the morning that we were in Norfolk; the first enquiry was where will they be safe. The place was soon found. There was a man by the name of Phelps that had a house that was not occupied; it was out of the way and out of sight. After breakfast, we went to the house; it was well located; it needed some cleaning and that my mother could do as well as the next woman… . Days and weeks passed on and we began to feel quite happy, hoping that the parson had gone South.
But Thompson had not gone, and after some time the word spread that he was planning to recapture his slaves— particularly James and his brother Joseph. Therefore a Mr. Cady, who lived next door to Phelps, volunteered to take the boys to a place where they would be safe. At twilight he led them over hills and through woods, over rocks and fallen logs. At one point they came out on top of Burr Mountain, in the northwest corner of the township. “We could look down in low grounds,” said James, “and see logs that were laid for the road across the meadow; at every flash they could be seen, but when it did not lighten, we could not see any thing; we kept on, our pilot knew the way.” He led them down from the hills toward the center of town, and so to the Tibbals house.
Here the boys were welcomed by “an old man, a middle aged man and his wife and four children… . We had not been there long,” James continued, “before it was thought best that my brother should be still more out of the way, as he was about six years older than I, which made him an object of greater search, and they were at a loss where to send him, as he was then about fourteen years of age.” Fortunately for Joseph, a young man named Butler, who was visiting in the neighborhood, agreed to take him to Massachusetts.
James, meanwhile, remained with the Tibbals for “a few days,” after which he rejoined his parents and sister at the Phelps house. But before he arrived there, Thompson had come and gone; he had left James’ mother with this proposition: “If she would go to Canaan and see to his things and pack them up for him, then if she did not want to go [to Virginia], she need not.” Since this was a bargain, James and his sister were obliged to return to Canaan with their parents. Still the parson, mindful of the profits from the Virginia auction block, was not satisfied—he wanted Joseph. Hence he demanded that James’ father search for him and bring him back. Now was the time for the elder Mars to act, and again he plotted to rescue his family. With Thompson’s
