tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post5045718623788805511..comments2024-03-28T04:26:30.557-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: New Evidence in Edward Jackson’s Libel Case?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-4065148720909452522009-08-26T18:48:43.387-05:002009-08-26T18:48:43.387-05:00Oh, come on—after twenty years of feuds in Woburn,...Oh, come on—after <i>twenty years</i> of feuds in Woburn, the enslaved man with the letter surely knew that his master wouldn’t want it or any other embarrassing evidence under the minister’s control. And this anecdote offers no reason for the man to turn over the letter while asking for directions.<br /><br />The letter-carrier needn’t have shared his master’s enmity, I agree; he and Jackson’s slave might even have gotten together to laugh about their owners’ feud. I can imagine other scenarios of the letter-carrier deliberately leaking the document because he was upset at his owner, or because he believed his owner was doing something wrong. (I can even imagine in those cases the letter-carrier lying to his master and saying he’d turned the letter over out of ignorance, causing the town’s white citizens to pass that story down.) <br /><br />But this story is predicated entirely on the black men’s ignorance, the minister’s innocence, and the other master’s arrogance. Only the last seems convincing, and even then both of us have doubts about an unsealed document.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-30773835424092829662009-08-26T13:37:50.297-05:002009-08-26T13:37:50.297-05:00I'm not sure your comments hold up. The text ...I'm not sure your comments hold up. The text quoted merely says that the first slave was illiterate, which is not unlikely. And it's not all that unlikely, either, that he (not necessarily being one of Jackson's enemies) would ask Jackson's slave for directions. The latter seems to have been pretty sharp, by this account -- not only was he the go-to guy for directions, but he knew enough to guess that Jackson would want to see a letter to that recipient.<br /><br />I doubt, however, that the letter was unsealed.Mr Punchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13516357354712554138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-63746303403661500702009-08-26T11:16:49.528-05:002009-08-26T11:16:49.528-05:00This Samuel Sewall indeed wrote about the time of ...This Samuel Sewall indeed wrote about the time of the U.S. Civil War. His <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=iN70zoqAVSkC" rel="nofollow"><i>History of Woburn</i></a> was published posthumously in 1868, with a memorial biography of its author.<br /><br />(I spelled Sewall’s name with two Es, as it appears in some databases, but have now changed that to match the title page of his book.) <br /><br />Sewall’s <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=iN70zoqAVSkC&pg=PA323" rel="nofollow">anecdote about the slaves</a> is even more casually racist in its whole than in the part I quoted here: made-up names, dialect, references to “simplicity.”<br /><br />Judge <a href="http://boston1775.blogspot.com/search/label/Samuel%20Sewall" rel="nofollow">Samuel Sewall</a>, an ancestor, was indeed long dead by this point, and also earned a spot for himself in New England history by advocating an end of slavery long before it was cool. <br /><br />By the time this Sewall was writing, most New Englanders had reached a consensus that slavery was a mistake of the past, but fortunately now <i>someone else’s problem</i>. They were divided as to how aggressively to try to fix that problem for those other people.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-11298776443908400032009-08-26T10:57:44.301-05:002009-08-26T10:57:44.301-05:00Do you have a date for the (ignorant and benighted...Do you have a date for the (ignorant and benighted) comment? And do you know who is the commentor? I looked up "Samuel Sewell," the Judge, whom you refer to often, and he seems to have been dead by this point, so perhaps it was a descendant writing? I am curious to know in what historic context the writer existed, and particularly whether the writing was done in the run-up to the American Civil War. (But, thinking about the comment generally, I can see that the writer is clearly in the same state of dimness which believes that store clerks know nothing about their customers, students know nothing about their teachers, and so on . . . )Chauceriannoreply@blogger.com