is good & that the said John Whipple recover of the said Jenny Slew costs tax at the Pltff appealed to the next Superior Court of Judicature to be holden for this County & entered into recognizance with sureties as the law directs for prosecuting her appeal to effect.” Records of the Inferior Court of C.C.P., Vol.—­, (Sept. 1760 to July 1766), page 502.

“JENNY SLEW of Ipswich, in the County of Essex, Spinster, Appellant, versus JOHN WHIPPLE, Jr. of said Ipswich, Gentleman Appellee from the judgment of an Inferior Court of Common Pleas held at Newburyport within and for the County of Essex on the last Tuesday of September 1765 when and where the appellant was plaint., and the appellee was defendant in a plea of trespass, for that the said John upon the 29th day of January, A.D. 1762, at Ipswich aforesaid with force and arms took her the said Jenny held & kept her in servitude as a slave in his service & has restrained her of her liberty from that time to the fifth of March 1765 without any lawful right or authority so to do & did other injuries against the Peace & to the damage of the said Jenny Slew, as she saith, the sum of twenty-five pounds, at which Inferior Court, judgment was rendered upon the demurrer then that the said John Whipple recover against the said Jenny Slew costs.  This appeal was brought forward at the Superior Court of Judicature &c., holden at Salem, within & for the County of Essex on the first Tuesday of last November, from whence it was continued to the last term of this Court for this County by consent & so from thence unto this Court, and now both parties appeared & the demurrer aforesaid being waived by consent & issue joined upon the plea tendered at said Inferior Court & on file.  The case after full hearing was committed to a jury sworn according to law to try the same who returned their verdict therein upon oath, that is to say, they find for appellant reversion of the former judgment four pounds money damage & costs.  It’s therefore considered by the Court, that the former judgment be reversed & that the said Slew recover against the said Whipple the sum of four pounds lawful money of this Province damage & costs taxed 9_l._ 9_s._ 6_d._

     “Exon. issued 4 Dec. 1766.” Records of the Superior Court
     of Judicature (vol. 1766-7), page 175.

The next of the “freedom cases,” in chronological order, was the case of Newport vs. Billing, and was doubtless the one in which John Adams was engaged in the latter part of September, 1768.[393] It was begun in the Inferior Court, where the decision was against the slave, Amos Newport.  The plaintiff took an appeal to the highest court in the colony; and that court gave as its solemn opinion, “that the said Amos [Newport] was not a freeman, as he alleged, but the proper slave of the said Joseph [Billing]."[394] It should not be lost sight of, that not only the Fundamental laws of 1641, but the highest court in Massachusetts, held, as late as 1768, that there was property in man!