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Blackstone, Mennonites, and Quock Walker
J. Michael Sharman
 
 
As part of the National Day of Prayer observance, my wife, Nancy, and I attended a pastor's prayer breakfast in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Richmond. (She's the ordained minister, not me.) The prayers ranged over many areas, but the pastors there in the former Capitol of the Confederacy were particularly focused on the issue of racial reconciliation. Later in the day, at the noon time prayer gathering at the Bell Tower on the lawn of the State Capitol, Pastor Jeff Light reminded the crowd that one of Christ's last prayers, recorded at John 17, was that His future believers (which means us) would be in unity with one another. 
All that got me thinking about England's William Blackstone, Pennsylvania Mennonites, and the Massachusetts case of Quock Walker v. Nathaniel Jennison.
Sir William Blackstone wrote the legal text used by essentially all of America's founding fathers. In Gary T. Amos' Conclusion to "A Guide to Understanding the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone", he explains that:
"Blackstone…defined 'the law of nature' as the will of God. … The law of nature was the original constitution of the universe [and] … intended to bind mankind forever in every circumstance, situation, condition, and location. … Originally man was able to perceive the just requirements of this law by means of natural law in his intellect. But man fell into sin and was corrupted and ruined in his ability to discern what is just by natural law. Therefore God gave mankind a special revelation of two things: the original precepts of the moral law, and the law of faith or how to be right with God. These two revelations are found in the Bible."
In the century before Blackstone, the standard practice of indentured servanthood for both blacks and whites was devolving into the American "peculiar institution" of perpetual slavery for blacks only. This was despite the fact that the Bible's revelation is about as clear as it can be that racism shouldn't get even the smallest toehold with Christians: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
In 1688, a group of Pennsylvania Mennonites saw that slavery was totally contrary to Christ's "Golden Rule" teaching. In their protest with the plain title, "Resolutions of Germantown Mennonites", they said: "Now, though they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we should do to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent, or colour they are. … Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries; separating husbands from their wives and children."
Nearly a century later, a 28 year-old Massachusetts runaway slave named Quock Walker was captured and beaten by his master, Nathaniel Jennison. Two local attorneys came to Quock's aid and sued the master for assault and battery and also for Quock's freedom. A jury of whites granted the slave his freedom and awarded him damages of 50 pounds.
In 1783, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld Quock Walker's verdicts and abolished slavery in that state on the basis of Blackstone's reasoning about God's natural law and the newly drafted Declaration of Independence. Justice Cushing wrote, "[A] different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven …has inspired all the human race."
Whether we do so by following the Pennsylvania Mennonites Golden Rule, Blackstone's natural law, or the early Massachusetts' court's Constitutional reasoning, it is time for us to listen to the pastors' National Day of Prayer message, drop our cultural and racial divisions and finally, truly, become the United States of America, and one nation under God.
 
 
 
 
 
NOTES & SOURCES:
·         Commager, Henry Steele, ed., Documents of American History, Appleton Century-Crofts, Inc., New York (4th ed. 1948), p.37 ff.
·         The Massachusetts Court System: "The Massachusetts Constitution, Judicial Review, and Slavery" http://www.mass.gov/courts/jaceducation/constjuslavery.html Fn. 16 Original court records are in the custody of the Supreme Judicial Court, Division of Archives and Records Preservation. Electronic information about the Quock Walker cases is available at The Long Road to Justice, www.masshist.org/longroad/01slavery/walker.htm. See also The Honorable Peter Agnes, The Quork [sic] Walker Cases and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts: A Reflection of Popular Sentiment or an Expression of Constitutional Law?, 1992 Boston Bar Journal 8 (1992); Zilversmit, Quok Walker, Mumbet, and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts, 25 The William and Mary Quarterly 614 (1968); Spector, The Quock Walker Cases (1781- 83): Slavery, its Abolition, and Negro Citizenship in Early Massachusetts, 53 The Journal of Negro History 12 (1968); O'Brien, Did the Jennison Case Outlaw Slavery in Massachusetts?, 17 The William and Mary Quarterly 219 (1960); Cushing, supra note 3.