‘An iniquitous scheme’

Illustration from the posthumously published biography of Chloe Spear, showing her abduction in Africa as a child; Spear was enslaved in Massachusetts from 1761 to until 1783, when slavery was abolished in the commonwealth after court cases.

“I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have."

— Abigail Adams to her husband, Founding Father John Adams, of Massachusetts, in a Sept. 22, 1774 letter

"Yankee mode of selling negroes" in Arkansas Intelligencer, Feb. 3, 1844, quotes from a 1742 Thomas Fleet ad for an enslaved woman. Arkansas, a slave state until its abolition, was part of the Confederacy. Slavery was abolished throughout the U.S. on Dec. 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment went into effect.