Transcript: Slavery in the North

NARRATION: Though often overlooked, slavery in the North was wide spread. In 1755 one in ten adults in Rhode Island was a black slave…

PETER DRUMMEY: This is a census, a town by town census, of Massachusetts...

NARRATION: ...and according to Peter’s records there were over two thousand slaves in Massachusettes spread throughout the colony…

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.: Braintree, Hall, and Brookline!

DRUMMEY: Brookline. It’s everywhere. And I think people today are not aware of that.

GATES: Um-um.

DRUMMEY: Not aware of slavery in Massachusetts. And even the people who are aware of slavery in, um, in New England…early slavery in New England don’t understand it to be everywhere in the landscape.

NARRATION: For many, even in the North, slavery was a hard habit to break. Around the same time as Kyra's 4th great grandfather, Theodore, was purchasing a slave in Massachusetts, Kevin Bacon's 6th great grandfather, a man named Samuel Atkinson, was tending his family farm in New Jersey. As a devout Quaker, Samuel found himself struggling with the morality of the institution of slavery itself.

CHRISTOPHER DENSMORE: When Quakers arrived in America in the 1650’s, slavery already existed; and Quakers did own slaves in New York and Philadelphia and New Jersey.

NARRATION: We met with Christopher Densmore, the curator of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, to understand more deeply the Quaker's shifting views about slavery.

DENSMORE: By the 1680’s, Quakers clearly are unhappy with some of the aspects of slavery, but it really takes them until the 1750’s before they come with a clear position that it’s not just treatment of slaves, it’s not just the African slave trade, “it’s a system that we can’t make better, we can’t make humane. It’s fundamentally wrong.”

NARRATION: Densmore showed us the minutes from Quaker meetings that describe these debates on the issue of slavery and their eventual decision to call for its abolition.

DENSMORE: They will include one of the questions at every meeting asked, and that’s whether Friends are clear of owning slaves, and the expectation is that you’re gonna be able to answer that “yes.”

NARRATION: According to Densmore, by 1775, about ten percent of Quakers still owned slaves. And Kevin's 6th great grandfather Samuel Atkinson was one of them.

GATES: This is Samuel Atkinson’s will, Kevin, from the year 1775, the year before the War of Independence broke out. Will you read the transcribed part?

KEVIN BACON: “I give and bequeath to my son, Samuel, my Mulatto man called Adam. I give and bequeath to my daughter Rebecca, my Mulatto boy called Lott. I give and bequeath to my daughter Ruth, my two Mulatto boys called Noah and Andrew.”

GATES: So, your ancestors owned slaves.

BACON: It’s kind of nauseating.

GATES: Did you ever think that your ancestors might have owned slaves, you know, being from the North?

BACON: Yeah. Well, when we were getting ready to do this, it did cross my mind. It’s one of those things that you kind of go, “Wow!” I’d like to think that, that didn’t happen, but yeah, it did cross my mind.

GATES: Hum. Were you surprised?

BACON: I’m kind of surprised on the Quaker side because I didn’t really ever think of the Quakers as being slave owners. Especially since they were a persecuted people as we spoke about before, who came over here to escape persecution. There’s such a disconnect there between the idea that you’re coming to some place so that you can practice religious freedom, at the same time, you think it’s okay to own a human being.

NARRATION: But, according to his will, Samuel, like so many other Quakers, re-thought his position.

"I desire that all my Mulattos kept to their reading," the will read. "And when each them attain the age of 35 years, that they have their liberty provided."

GATES: He wants them to learn how to read and he wants them to be set free. Kevin, I’ve seen many will slave owners and most of them did not explicitly instruct their heirs to make sure their slaves continued to be educated. ‘Cause remember, throughout many of the slave states in the South, it was explicitly illegal for a black person to learn how to read and write and for a white person to teach a black person to read and write.

BACON: Right.

GATES: He also wants them to be freed at the age of 35.

BACON: Set ‘em free now, dude (laughs), what are you waiting for?

GATES: (Laughs) But, he was clearly concerned about their welfare. Now, here I am, a black man, defending the slave owner, right (laughs). I’m trying to tell you he wasn’t as bad as some of theses guys, right.

DENSMORE: By trying to keep them until they’re in their 30’s, he’s very far behind the sentiment of Friends. But by offering to free the slaves at all, Atkinson’s far advanced of the great bulk of American society.

He has done more than most people have done. George Washington will eventually free his slaves by his will when he’s dead.