Caesar Sarter’s 1774 essay on the front page of The Massachusetts and New-Hampshire General Advertiser. Source: Newburyport Public Library
On Aug. 17, 1774, formerly enslaved African American Caesar Sarter made front-page news in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts and New-Hampshire General Advertiser published an essay he wrote eight months after the Boston Tea Party, as white colonists trumpeted their “natural rights” to shrug off Britain’s policies of taxation without representation.
Sarter cut through the noise: “I need not point out the absurdity of your exertions for liberty, while you have slaves in your houses.”
He continued:
You who are deterred from liberating your slaves, by the consideration of the ill consequences to yourselves must remember, that we were not the cause of our being brought here. If the compelling us, against our wills, to come here was a sin; to retain us, without our consent, now we are here, is, I think, equally culpable . . . Not to trespass too much on your patience; would you unite in this generous, this noble purpose of granting us liberty . . .
Read more in the lesson “Founding” Documents We Don’t Learn About.
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