Slavery was prohibited in Massachusetts by the terms of the constitution of 1780, which declared `` all men are born free and equal ''.

In 1854, American author, poet, and political thinker Henry David Thoreau said, in a speech entitled " Slavery in Massachusetts ":

Chapman was a prolific writer in her own right, publishing Right and Wrong in Massachusetts in 1839 and How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery?

* " Slavery in Massachusetts " by Henry David Thoreau

Slavery in Massachusetts was denied legal standing.

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America ( Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998 ) p. 306-307

" ( See also: Thoreau's Slavery in Massachusetts which also advances this argument.

Charles Lowell, D. D., wrote in a personal letter eight decades later, “ My father introduced into the Bill of Rights the clause by which Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts ... and when it was adopted, exclaimed: ' Now there is no longer Slavery in Massachusetts, it is abolished and I will render my services as a lawyer gratis to any slave suing for his freedom if it is withheld from him ...' and he did so defend the negro slave against his master under this clause of the constitution which was declared valid by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1783, and since that time Slavery in Mass.

For instance, in an 1847 lecture to the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, Massachusetts, he said, " Were I about to tell you the evils of Slavery, to represent to you the Slave in his lowest degradation, I should wish to take you, one at a time, and whisper it to you.

* Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery – Russia – University of Massachusetts resource

Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a FreesoilerAn 1854 cartoon depicts a giant Free Soil Party | free soiler being held down by James Buchanan and Lewis Cass standing on the Democratic Party ( United States ) | Democratic platform marked " Kansas ", " Cuba " and " Central America " ( referring to accusations that southerners wanted to annex areas in Latin America to expand slavery ).

* 1854 May 14 – 15, The Texas State Convention of Germans meet in San Antonio and adopt a political, social and religious platform, including: 1 ) Equal pay for equal work ; 2 ) Direct election of the President of the United States ; 3 ) Abolition of capital punishment ; 4 ) “ Slavery is an evil, the abolition of which is a requirement of democratic principles ..”; 5 ) Free schools – including universities-supported by the state, without religious influence ; and 6 ) Total separation of church and state.

* 1854 May 14 – 15, The Texas State Convention of Germans meet in San Antonio and adopt a political, social and religious platform, including: 1 ) Equal pay for equal work ; 2 ) Direct election of the President of the United States ; 3 ) Abolition of capital punishment ; 4 ) “ Slavery is an evil, the abolition of which is a requirement of democratic principles ..”; 5 ) Free schools – including universities-supported by the state, without religious influence ; and 6 ) Total separation of church and state.

The industrialisation of the watch industry started 1854 also in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the Waltham Watch Company, with the development of machine tools, tools, gauges and assembling methods adapted to the micro precision required for watches.

* 1787 – John Davis, 14th and 17th Governor of Massachusetts ( d. 1854 )

Jaynes was born in West Newton, Massachusetts, son of Julian Clifford Jaynes ( 1854 – 1922 ), a Unitarian minister, and Clara Bullard Jaynes ( 1884-1980 ).

* 1854 – The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Massachusetts, to become the Waltham Watch Company, a pioneer in the American system of watch manufacturing.

* Elisha Huntington, Lieutenant Governor for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1853 to 1854

Before Sargent's birth, his father FitzWilliam ( b. 1820 Gloucester, Massachusetts ) was an eye surgeon at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia 1844 – 1854.

Other social leaders who came from Leicester include Charles Adams, military officer and foreign minister, born in town ; Emory Washburn, governor of Massachusetts from 1854 – 1855 ; and Samuel May, a pastor and active abolitionist in the 1860s, whose house was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

He was a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1853, city solicitor for Boston from 1854 until 1856, and in 1866-70 was United States district attorney for Massachusetts.

Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.

After graduating from Harvard College in 1852 and Harvard Law School in 1854, he was admitted first to the Massachusetts ( 1855 ) and then ( 1856 ) to the New York bar, and entered the law office of Scudder & Carter in New York City.

He later served a short term as attorney-general of Massachusetts in 1853 – 1854.

He was raised in Maine and Massachusetts and, in 1854, his family became part of the newly formed New England Emigrant Aid Company, an organization whose goal was to help settle the Kansas Territory and bring it into the Union as a free state.

He became a leading member of the Massachusetts Whig Party, a leading and founding member of the Massachusetts Free Soil Party, and a founding member and chair of the committee that organized the founding convention for the Massachusetts Republican Party in 1854.

* John Davis ( Massachusetts governor ) ( 1787 – 1854 ), Governor of Massachusetts, 1834 – 1835 ; 1841 – 1843

In 1854, the company moved to a new factory in Waltham, Massachusetts, and took the name of the Boston Watch Company.

In 1854, he was named Reporter of Decisions for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, a very prestigious appointment for so young a man and one which allowed him to edit numerous volumes of court records and provided for some independent legal writing, all of which earned him a very good reputation as a scholar and legal historian.

In 1854 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provided $ 2, 000, 000 in credit to Edward Wellman Serrell and Company, which began work in 1855.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she was the second wife of the publisher and author James Thomas Fields, whom she married in 1854, and with whom she encouraged up and coming writers such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Freeman, and Emma Lazarus.

On June 10, 1854, he was ordained at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris as a priest to serve in Boston, Massachusetts.