These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Two years later, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court formally ruled that slavery was inconsistent with the state’s constitution, adding, “Is not a law of nature that all men are equal and free? Is not the laws of nature the laws of God? Is not the law of God then against slavery?” The next year, Pennsylvania’s 1775 Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage renamed itself the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and a judge in Vermont ruled in favor of a runaway slave whose master had produced a bill of sale proving his ownership: the judge said in order to retain his property in the form of another man he’d have to provide a bill of sale from “God Almighty.”