Lemuel Haynes’s Sermon
In 1776, Lemuel Haynes, a Revolutionary War veteran and minister, wrote this sermon condemning slavery. He quoted the Declaration of Independence.
Haynes was born in the western district of Hartford, CT in 1753. He was raised as an indentured servant to a blind farmer in Massachusetts. When he was 21, his indenture ended and he joined the militia, serving until 1776. He then studied theology. In 1785, he became likely the first Black ordained Congregational minister in the United States. His first pastorship was in Torrington.
In 1776, Haynes wrote a sermon he entitled, “Liberty, Further Extended,” which expanded on the principles of the new Declaration of Independence. “What is precious to one man, is precious to another,” Haynes argued, “and what is irksom, or intolarable to one man, is so to another, consider’d in a Law of Nature. Therefore we may reasonably Conclude, that Liberty is Equally as pre[c]ious to a Black man, as it is to a white one, and Bondage Equally as intollarable to the one as it is to the other.”
The original sermon is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.
Credits
Lemuel Haynes’s sermon is in the Wendell Family Papers at Harvard University’s Houghton Library in Cambridge, MA.