Samuel Sewall moved to New England as a child in 1661. He became a wealthy merchant in Boston and served as a justice on the Massachusetts Colony Supreme Court. Sewall was one of the judges at the Salem witch trials, an experience he later regretted and even apologized for. In 1700 Sewall authored a pamphlet entitled “The Selling of Joseph” in which he called for slavery to be abolished, arguing that all humans are God’s creations and should not be enslaved. His pamphlet was the first anti-slavery writing by a New England colonist. Sewall idealized the initial generations of colonists who came from England to establish a “city on a hill” full of godliness and purpose. In his writing he expresses disappointment that successive generations of colonists lost their values, and he accuses them of being motivated by greed.

Sewall admitted in a diary entry that he had long been uncomfortable with slavery and that hearing of other anti-slavery activity, such as petitions and taxes on enslaved people, motivated him to write his manifesto. Sewall’s diary reveals that he had had many encounters with enslaved and free African and Indigenous people in his decades of working as a merchant.