Samuel Sewall
The sequence that made Sewall opens the headnote to his own document: a judge at the Salem trials in 1692, his confession read aloud over him in Boston's South Church five years later, and this tract printed at his own expense in 1700. What the library shows that an account of his life does not is what he argued with. The Selling of Joseph cites the manstealing law of Exodus 21:16 as law of everlasting equity, and that law is clause 10 of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties. The tract prints the reference as Exod. 12.16, where the verse is 21:16. Clause 91 of the same document legalises slavery. Sewall was not appealing to an older law or a better colony. He was holding one clause of Massachusetts against another clause of the same document, and he lost.
What this library holds
The Selling of Joseph, A Memorial
June 24, 1700 | Samuel Sewall
The first antislavery tract printed in New England, argued from Acts 17 and the sons of Adam, seventy six years before the Declaration.
What it holds that bears on Samuel Sewall
The Massachusetts Body of Liberties
December 1641 | Nathaniel Ward and the General Court of Massachusetts
Ninety eight liberties and twelve capital laws, written down in 1641, protecting a man from torture and his wife from beating, and legalising slavery in the same document.
Where this sits
Covenant, 1620 to 1700. Self-government practised before anyone theorised it. People bound themselves to each other in writing because there was nobody else to do it for them.
- Before: The Massachusetts Body of Liberties, Nathaniel Ward and the General Court of Massachusetts.
- After: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards.
What to read about Samuel Sewall
Nothing. The Formation Library carries fifty four entries and names Samuel Sewall in none of them. That is recorded here rather than filled with the nearest section, which is not about Samuel Sewall. The Formation Library is worth reading anyway.