Historical Event
Drafting of the Sheffield Resolves (1773)
In 1773, Colonel John Ashley hosted a committee of Berkshire County colonists in his upstairs study to draft the Sheffield Resolves, an early statement of colonial rights declaring that "mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other." An enslaved woman in the Ashley household named Bett is believed to have overheard these deliberations, and the language of natural equality debated in that room is thought to have directly informed the freedom suit she brought against Ashley eight years later.
Why This Matters
This moment matters because it captures the striking contradiction at the heart of the Revolutionary era: colonists demanding liberty from Britain while holding other human beings in bondage inside their own homes. That contradiction did not go unnoticed by the enslaved people who overheard it, and Bett's ability to turn her enslaver's own political language back against him is a powerful, direct example of how the diaspora repeatedly seized the rhetoric of freedom and made it apply to itself.
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