James Somersett – Wikipedia

James Somersett or Somerset , African-American black slave, was released in 1772 by the Somersett stop , in which he was judged by Lord Mansfield that the master of a slave could not force him to leave England against his will. Although not having abolished slavery in law, the Somersett judgment is nevertheless considered to have marked the abolition in fact of slavery in England, long before its abolition de jure in 1833.

James Somersett was a young slave bought in Virginia in 1749 by a certain Charles Stuart. He was at the service of the English government and traveled for his work, accompanied by Somersett who then had no first name.

In 1769, Stuart and Somersett went to England where Somersett met people involved in the anti-slavery movement, in particular the activist Granville Sharp. Somersett was then baptized under the name of James.

In 1771, James Somersett fled. Stuart offered a reward and Somersett was resumed. Stuart then put him aboard a ship from the Jamaica where he was to be sold. The baptism sponsors of Somersett discovered what had become. They went to the Royal Court (King’s Bench) and obtained a Habeas Corpus prescription which ordered the captain of the ship to present Somersett in person at the Court, which was done.

At that time, public opinion had a bad image of the institution of slavery. Before the Royal Court, the highest jurisdiction in England, Somersett pleaded for his release, with the help of anti-slavery groups, against Stuart, who had the support of the Caribbean planters interested in the continuation of slavery.

In the Somersett case, the president of the royal court, Lord Mansfield, made the June 22, 1772 The following judgment:

“The situation of slave is of such a nature that it could not be established for any moral or political reason, but only by a law promulgated, which remains in force long after reason, the occasion, and The very circumstances where it was created disappeared from memory. This situation is so odious that nothing can be invoked to support it, otherwise the law. Whatever the disadvantages that may be the consequence of my decision, it is impossible for me to say that this situation is permitted or approved by the law of England, and therefore this black must be considered free. »»

This decision made case law: in the absence of a positive law explicitly justifying the state of slave in England, any fleeting slave on English soil could not be given to its owner ^{[ first ]} .

Although the Somersett judgment has created a legal precedent to affirm that slavery is illegal in Great Britain, and although the serfdom has disappeared for centuries, this did not stop the participation of the British in the slave trade and to the practice of slavery in the rest of the British Empire. Five years later, at the end of the 1770s, James Boswell wrote to Samuel Johnson to give him the report of a judgment pronounced by the Supreme Scottish court in a new slavery case, “even more considerable than the ‘Somersett affair »According to Boswell: the Joseph Knight affair, African employee as a slave in Jamaica ^{[ 2 ]} . Lawyer Maclaurin received Johnson’s congratulations for his advocacy in favor of Knight.

It was only in 1807 that Parliament decided to suppress African trafficking, and slavery continued in several regions of the British Empire in different forms. It was the abolition law of 1833 which ended the planting slavery in the Caribbean, the colony of Cape Town and Mauritius. However, because of the Somersett judgment, there was never a law to abolish slavery in Great Britain, where it had never been legal. It was section IV of the abolition law of 1833, releasing any slave transported to Great Britain with the authorization of the owner, who had the effect of legally abolishing slavery in Great Britain.

The resolutions deposited in 1841 by Joshua Reed Giddings before the House of Representatives of the United States, on the occasion of the Creole affair, resumed the terms of the Somersett judgment.

Related articles [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

External link [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• Notes in generalist dictionaries or encyclopedias :
• Somersett’s Case , Wikipedia in English (which presents all the consequences of the stop)