Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

By the end of January 1842, the “select committee” had launched an antislavery onslaught that brought the question of Black sailors’ rights into the House. Massachusetts congressmen took turns introducing petitions concerning slavery and related matters. The petitions demanded, among other things, that Congress protect fugitive slaves in the free states, abolish slavery in the District of Columbia or move the US capital, ensure “a republican form of Government” for every state, refuse to admit Florida as a slave state, and, of course, rescind the gag rule. Amid the maelstrom, Adams introduced a petition from “sundry colored seamen and citizens of the United States” seeking relief from “certain vexations” they experienced in ports in the southern United States and in Cuba, where Black sailors also faced arrest and incarceration upon arrival in Havana.6