Timeline of Connecticut Laws Pertaining to
Enslaved Persons 1643-1848

Introduction

This timeline of laws is compiled from excerpts of Connecticut statutes from the 17th, 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. They are presented on this website because they applied to enslaved persons. While some laws only applied to black persons or Native Americans others applied to servants in general, apprentices, children and also women who were under the guardianship of their husbands and therefore legally considered minors.

The statutes and laws chosen here have been categorized into four topics: “Fugitive Laws and Slave Trade”; Slave Code”; “Manumission laws”, and “Abolition Laws.”

Together the laws tell the development of the legal structure that defined the lives of enslaved persons and their masters, as well as shaped society in general. The first law that documented the institution of slavery legally was a fugitive law in the 1643 Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England. By the beginning of the 1700s “slave codes” that only applied to black persons and Native Americans, or their descendants, were already enacted. An example is the “Act to prevent the Disorder of Negro and Indian-Servants and Slaves, in the Night-Season.”

Very importantly and with much consequence, an act relating to slavery was implemented in 1702/03 that obligated any master who freed an enslaved person to financially support that person should he or she become poor. As a consequence, towns in Connecticut sued each other or sued the masters for payment of living expenses for many impoverished freed persons. Many such settlement suits happened during the first half of the 19th Century.

In 1784 Connecticut created a gradual abolition law to end slavery over a span of decades. Often misunderstood, this law did not free any enslaved person in 1784. Rather it regulated that no child born from an enslaved mother after March 1, 1784 “shall be held in Servitude, longer than until they arrive to the Age of twenty-five Years (...)”. The exact meaning of this sentence was clarified by the Connecticut Supreme Court in the 1817 settlement case Windsor v. Hartford. In that case the court interpreted that sentence to mean that children from a female enslaved person born after March 1, 1784 were not enslaved but held in servitude until the age of 25.

Also included in the 1784 act was an update on the manumission law: A master who wanted to free an enslaved person could obtain a certificate that exempted the master from the liability to provide the freed person with financial support should he or she became poor.

In the 1770s and 80s Connecticut outlawed the slave trade through several acts: In section 9 of the 1784 act Connecticut restated a non-importation act from 1774 that regulated that (because it was “injurious to the Poor, and inconvenient), “no Indian, Negro or Mulatto Slave, shall at all Time herafter, be brought or imported into this State, by Sea or Land, from any Place or Places whatsoever, to be disposed of, left or sold within this State.” Section 10 created a penalty of $334 for every Slave “imported, brought into the State, received or purchased.” In 1788 a specific “Act to prevent the Slave Trade” made it a crime for each “Citizen or Inhabitant of this State” to trade or aid in the slave trade. The special penalty for a forbidden trading vessel was $1,667.

Additional updates occurred in the 1790s:

Specific law suits often further developed the understanding of these laws as courts had to interpret them in order to find whether the impoverished person was a resident of a town according to the slave trade laws or whether the person was already free or freed by a master. One example is the case Windsor v. Hartford from 1817.

Another interesting case is Jackson v. Bulloch from 1837. In this case Nancy Jackson sued her master James Bulloch on habeas corpus. Nancy Jackson was born 1813 in Georgia and brought to Connecticut by James Bulloch in 1835 where he left her with his family in Connecticut while he moved back to Georgia over the winter. The Connecticut Supreme Court interpreted the non-importation language as stated above in section 9 of the 1784 law, in that the condition of the word “left” was fulfilled when the slave was residing for a period of two years. In addition, the court interpreted the law of 1784 to be applicable for persons born after 1784 even if they were not born in Connecticut and therefore declared Nancy Jackson to be a free woman.

These and other cases are cited in the footnote of the “Act to Prevent Slavery”.

Slavery was finally abolished in 1848 through the “Act to Prevent Slavery” with the simple sentence: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Assembly convened:
Section 1. That no person shall hereby be held in slavery in this state.”

Additional information:

  • While the statutes tell us what the written laws were, they are silent on the question whether or not or how often they were enforced.

  • The laws provided in our timeline are not complete. There are many that deal with the master-servant relationship that are not part of this timeline.

  • To give the readers a more thorough understanding and to prevent the reader from jumping to conclusions, we provide the laws in their original writing including the old ways of spelling as found in the portrayed sources. For purposes of easier reading, the texts are not represented with the old fashioned long “s.”

  • The Connecticut laws on fugitive slaves had to be compliant with the federal fugitive slave acts from 1793 and 1850. Further information on the federal fugitive slave acts can be found here.

    • The text of the Federal Fugitive Slave Act from 1793 can be found here.

    • The text of the Federal Fugitive Slave Act from 1850 can be found here.

    • A leading decision before the Civil War was the 1842 Supreme Court decision Priggs v. Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court declared a Pennsylvanian statute unconstitutional that made it a criminal office to remove enslaved persons out of state with the intent to force them into slavery. The Court referred to the former Article IV Section 2 of the Constitution as the authority to enact the Fugitive Slave Act. On the other hand, the states had the power to free enslaved persons that were brought into their states. This option was exercised by the Connecticut state legislature through their fugitive slave laws and specified by court decisions such as Jackson v. Bulloch.

  • For further detailed reading see David Menschel, Abolition without deliverance: The law of Connecticut Slavery 1784 - 1848, Yale Law Journal Volume 111, page 183 (2001).

Bibliography of sources used for this timeline:

  • Yale University, The Avalon Project - The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England

  • Samuel M. Smucker (Editor), Blue Laws of Connecticut: A Collection of the Earliest Statutes and Judicial Proceedings of That Colony; Being an Exhibition of the Rigorous Morals and Legislation of the Puritans (1861)

  • Acts and Laws, of His Majesties Colony of Connecticut in New-England: Passed by the General Assembly, May 1716 to May 1749 (1919)

  • Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut in America (1784)

  • Acts and Laws of His Majesties Colony of Connecticut in New England (1702), First Reissued (1901)

  • T. R. Davis, Negro Servitude in the United States: Servitude Distinguished from Slavery, Journal of Negro History 247-66 (1923), page 266

  • Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut in America (1805)

  • Statutes of the State of Connecticut (1866)

  • Statutes of the State of Connecticut (1854)

  • Public Statute Laws of the State of Connecticut, Compiled in Obedience to a Resolve of the General Assembly, Passed May, Eighteen Hundred and Thirty-Eight (1839)