Three court cases have become collectively known as the “Quock Walker Cases.” The hearings date from 1781 to 1783 and involve four main participants: Quock, Nathaniel Jennison, and the Caldwell brothers. The first trials began in June 1781 when Quock took up a case against Nathaniel Jennison for assault and battery. Quock testified that in April 1781, Jennison attacked him and struck him with the handle of a whip on his back and arms multiple times before kidnapping and locking him in an outbuilding for several hours before his release [1]. Quock had been laboring under his own free will at the Caldwell farm at the time. Quock sued Jennison for fifty pounds. Nathaniel attended the trial with two attorneys, John Strange and William Stearns, who argued that since Quock was the “proper negro slave” of Jennison, he could be reprimanded as such. They argued that Quock’s slave status was solidified through his marriage to Isabel Caldwell, who had inherited Quock as part of her late husband’s estate.

​

Quock’s attorneys, Caleb Strong and Levi Lincoln, were very well respected and held several government offices between them. Levi Lincoln was a Harvard University graduate, later Attorney General under Thomas Jefferson in 1801, and Governor of Massachusetts in 1808. Lincoln also sat for the United States Senate and House of Representatives. During the time of Quock’s trial, Lincoln was working in Worcester, MA, and had previously run an office in Northampton, MA. Lincoln had a relationship with Caleb Strong, another Northampton attorney who also graduated from Harvard. Strong won the office of Governor of Massachusetts twice, once in 1800 and again in 1812. Caleb grew up with slaves in his household; his father ran a tannery that employed the best “negro” fiddler in Northampton [2]. As a lawyer, Caleb was said to advocate for the rights of humanity and “he early took a decided part in favor of the negroes” [3].

Quock, therefore, had the best representation that could have been gained. How Quock was able to enlist the services of these men may always be one of the mysteries around this case. Certainly, the cost of representation from this expert team was not cheap, and Quock, a slave, had little money to his name. Additionally, both Northampton and Worcester were a five-hour walk from Quock’s home in Barre. This is one of the reasons that scholars such as John Cushing believe that the episode may have been created by the Caldwells to punish Jennison for ongoing family disputes, or perhaps to bring the new “free and equal” clause of the Massachusetts Constitution before the courts in a case that would set a precedent for abolition [4].

​

Quock’s legal team argued that since his original master and mistress promised him freedom at twenty-five years of age, Quock was free to work for the Caldwells as he chose. Jennison had no right to assault or imprison him. It was not uncommon for individual slaves to win their freedom through the court system or to be manumitted at a certain age. The jury was convinced that Quock was not the “proper negro slave” of Jennison, and the court ordered Jennison to pay the fifty pounds Quock sued for.

Unhappy with the judgment and unable to bring the same issue back to court, Jennison pressed charges against the Caldwells for enticing Quock to run away. The jury found the Caldwell brothers guilty. This essentially created opposing rulings: the first verified that Quock was not the legal property of Jennison, and the second punished the Caldwells for enticing Jennison’s property (Quock) to run away. If Quock was a free man, there would be no crime in the Caldwells asking Quock to come work for them. Thus, though Quock had won his freedom, the question remained as to whether the Caldwells had enticed Quock to leave his “master.” The case then made it to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, where Lincoln and Strong focused on the broader issue of slavery in the state, and in any state. According to them, Quock and all enslaved peoples were never legally enslaved. For even if the laws of the land permitted such atrocity, the larger issue of natural law and reason trumps all. Ultimately, a final ruling on all matters was made by a full bench of Supreme Court Justices. They ruled that Quock was a free man then and at the time he left the Jennison estate for the Caldwells. In his trial notes, Justice William Cushing writes, “there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational Creature, unless his Liberty is forfeited by Some Criminal Conduct or given up by personal Consent or Contract” [5].

​

It is the above statement that provides the end to slavery in the Bay State. However, considering the legal team, multiple trials, and expanding abolitionist sentiment in the state, it was not organically said. There is strong evidence to suggest that Quock’s case was intentionally turned from an issue between a slave and his master to one that set the precedent for slavery. How Lincoln and Strong heard of Quock’s plea is a key to the puzzle that remains unknown. Were these lawyers actively seeking a slave’s case to accelerate to the Supreme Court to pave the way for their future careers, or were they so dedicated to abolitionism that they yearned for the perfect plaintiff to bring enlightenment to all?

​

Questions abound as to what life was like for Quock during the trials. He would have been hard-pressed to return to the home of Jennison, considering he truly believed himself free. Since Quock did not purchase his own property until after the trials, he would have had to board somewhere, perhaps with the Caldwell brothers, all the while working and earning wages. He would have also needed transportation to and from Worcester for the various hearings. In the future, as more documents are discovered and digitized, personal journals of either the Caldwells, Strong, or Lincoln may provide further insight into the movements of Quock during these years.

​

[1] Suffolk County, Massachusetts Court Files 1629-1797, case 153101.

[2] James Trumbull “History of Northampton” (Northampton: 1902), 596.

[3] Trumbull, 630.

[4] Cushing, John D. "The Cushing Court and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts: More Notes on the 'Quock Walker Case.'" The American Journal of Legal History 5, no. 2 (1961): 120. Accessed January 19, 2021. doi:10.2307/844116.

[5] William Cushing, “Legal notes about the Quock Walker Case” 1783, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/630, accessed January 2021.