James Mars

Mars was born into slavery in Canaan, Connecticut. His parents, Jupiter and Fanny Mars, were enslaved persons who were owned by the Reverend Amos Thompson, Canaan's Congregational minister, and by Thompson's Virginia-born wife. Jupiter Mars fought in the American Revolution. James's sister, Elizabeth, would spend 34 years as a missionary in Liberia.{{Cite web|last=Conrad|first=Robert J.|date=1996-06-16|title=Slave's Narrative Tells a History of Humanity|url=https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1996-06-16-9606160280-story.html|access-date=2022-02-02|website=Hartford Courant|language=en}}

In 1784, Connecticut had enacted a gradual emancipation law that freed any enslaved person born in the state on or after March 1, 1784, once the person reached a given age (in Mars's case, the age of 25). However, Thompson attempted to bypass the emancipation law by moving to Virginia, a slave state, and forcing James and his brother, sister, and parents to accompany him. The Mars family instead fled to neighboring Norfolk, Connecticut, and took refuge with white abolitionists, who kept them hidden and safe, moving from place to place, while Thompson and his agents attempted to recapture the fugitives.{{Cite web|last=Hutchins|first=Zachary|date=n.d.|title=Summary of Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut. Written by Himself|url=https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/mars64/summary.html|access-date=2022-02-02|website=Documenting the American South|publisher=University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill}}

By September 1798, Thompson struck a deal with the Mars family through intermediaries. As part of the deal, James Mars and his brother agreed to work as slaves in Norfolk until they turned 25. Their parents and sister would be manumitted immediately. James's new captor, a man named Munger, proved a harsh taskmaster. In 1811, Mars paid $90 (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US|value=90|start_year=1811}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US}}) to buy out his remaining years of servitude.{{Cite journal|last=Menschel|first=David|date=2001|title=Abolition without Deliverance: The Law of Connecticut Slavery 1784-1848|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/797518|journal=Yale Law Journal|volume=111|issue=1|pages=183–222|doi=10.2307/797518|jstor=797518 |issn=0044-0094}} He later reconciled with his captors and cared for the ailing Mr. Munger and his daughter until both died.{{Cite web|last=Hinks|first=Peter P.|date=2015-02-28|title=James Mars' Words Illuminate the Cruelty of Slavery in New England|url=https://connecticuthistory.org/james-mars-words-illuminate-the-cruelty-of-slavery-in-new-england/|access-date=2022-02-02|website=Connecticut History {{!}} a CTHumanities Project|language=en}}

File:James Mars.jpgMars became a leader in New England's freedmen community and in African American reform movements for temperance and enfranchisement. During the 1830s, he worked in a dry goods store in Hartford, Connecticut, where he helped found the Talcott Street Church, in which he served as deacon alongside minister James W. C. Pennington. Mars was a principal in the 1837 landmark case Jackson v. Bulloch, in which the Connecticut Supreme Court freed a fugitive enslaved woman, Nancy Jackson, after she had lived two years in Connecticut with her Georgia captor, James Bulloch. Mars also raised funds for the legal defense of the passengers of La Amistad. By 1840, he was serving on the board of the mostly white Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society.{{Cite book|last=Beeching|first=Barbara J.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zD_ODQAAQBAJ|title=Hopes and Expectations: The Origins of the Black Middle Class in Hartford|publisher=SUNY Press|year=2016|isbn=978-1-4384-6165-6|pages=46–47|language=en}}

Mars married in the early 1830s. By the time they departed Hartford, he and his wife had had eight children, one of whom died in infancy. Circa 1845, the family moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he lived for twenty years, purchased land, farmed, and continued to participate in Black reform and antislavery movements. Three of his sons fought for the Union in the Civil War.

As an impoverished elderly man, Mars returned to Norfolk and published The Life of James Mars: A Slave Bought and Sold in Connecticut (Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Company, 1864). The pamphlet-length book went through at least six editions, including a 1868 edition that included more details of his later life. Mars explained that he wrote his memoirs because "some told me that they did not know that slavery was ever allowed in Connecticut, and some affirm that it never did exist in the State."

In August 1879, Mars was granted a pension by the State of Connecticut.{{Cite news|date=1879-08-25|title=A Connecticut Slave|page=2|work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/94005009/st-louis-post-dispatch/|access-date=2022-02-02}} He died less than a year later in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts. He was interred in the Center Cemetery in Norfolk.

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• [https://www.loc.gov/item/92838796/ Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut] - Full text via the Library of Congress

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Category:1790 births

Category:1880 deaths

Category:People from Canaan, Connecticut

Category:African-American non-fiction writers

Category:19th-century American memoirists

Category:Writers of slave narratives

Category:19th-century American slaves

Category:Free Negroes

Category:19th-century African-American writers