Pomp

Source:

 African American National Biography

Pomp

(c.1762–6 Aug. 1795),

enslaved man and farmer, was probably born in West Africa. He worked as a farmhand and slave in Massachusetts. A transcript of Pomp's dying confession, which survives as a one-page broadside, is the only source of information about his life, but one that provides rare insight into the life of an African American in New England in the days of the early republic.

How exactly Pomp came to America, and specifically Boston, is unclear, but he arrived as a baby along with both his parents. His father died soon after his arrival in Boston and Pomp was put into the service of a Mr. Abbot of Andover (whether in slavery or indenture is not known). Pomp remained with Mr. Abbot until the age of sixteen, at which time he was passed on to his master's son (also referred to as Mr. Abbot). It was at this point that Pomp apparently began to question the nature of his servitude and his lack of appropriate compensation and attempted to assert his freedom. The American Revolution and the rhetoric surrounding it may have affected him, though unlike David Walker and other black nationalists he does not explicitly refer to the Declaration of Independence or the war. Pomp's confession does not indicate if he was influenced by the lawsuits filed by others enslaved in Massachusetts in response to the 1780 state constitution. People such as Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett) in 1781 and Quok Walker in 1783 successfully challenged the legality of slavery under the constitution of Massachusetts and gained their immediate freedom. After appealing to the selectmen of Andover for clarification of his status as slave or free, and not being freed from his service, Pomp briefly remained with the second Mr. Abbot and then became the servant of Captain Charles Furbush. While slavery was no longer legal in Massachusetts after 1783 the status of some servants continued as perpetual servitude and not as limited time indenture.

In his confession Pomp described his life on the Furbush farm as a time of unjustly difficult work with little aid from his master. Pomp tended to large numbers of cattle and horses as well as growing grain crops. The main grievances that Pomp recounted were lack of time to go to church on Sundays, no time off for public holidays such as Election Day, virtually no compensation for his labor, and the lack of other laborers to assist him in his tasks. As with many other black New Englanders, Pomp had no community of fellow servants or fellow African Americans with which to interact. His society was composed almost entirely of Europeans of alien culture and customs from those he brought to the New World. Like many other slaves and servants in the new American republic, Pomp chose to resist his master by running away. His confession illustrates that escape and harsh response to escape were not the sole prerogative of the southern plantation. Treatment could be as harsh in Massachusetts as in Charleston, and without recourse to a community of those similarly treated. Had Pomp lived in Boston, his lot might have been different and his options for an independent life greater, but Andover was a town with a minuscule African population.

Pomp's escape was short-lived. He was recaptured and whipped severely in punishment. Despite the harsh treatment, Pomp again ran away. Again recaptured, he continued to work on the Furbush farm for more than ten years. Finally, sometime around 1795, Pomp attempted escape one more time, and while able to maintain his freedom for a week was again recaptured and, in his words, “I was again brought back by my master, stripped naked, tied up by both hands, and unmercifully flogged. This was in the evening, and though it was late in the fall, and cold, frosty, icy weather, my master left me thus naked and tied up, till the morning.” This indignity, on top of the years of bondage, caused Pomp to resist his captivity in the most direct way possible: “I took an axe and went softly into the bed room of my master, and the moon shining bright distinguished him from my mistress.” Pomp killed Captain Furbush, but not Mrs. Furbush, and was soon arrested without resistance. As he explained it, he thought by eliminating his master he would obtain his freedom and, oddly enough, the right to his master's house and wife, as well. On 6 August 1795 Pomp was tried, convicted, and hanged in Ipswich, Massachusetts, for the murder of Captain Furbush.

Pomp's demise at the gallows was not an uncommon end among black New Englanders. Unlike in the plantation South, where the body of the slave was a valuable object, and the enslaved person was intrinsically valuable as a piece of property that could be rented, sold, or foreclosed upon—and not just as a source of labor, a condition that conferred protection from execution except in the most egregious circumstances—in New England there were no financial barriers to executing black people, and in fact execution was seen as a tool to control what was considered a dangerous population. Indeed, the criminalization of African and Native American behavior often served the dual purpose of upholding the law and carrying out an object lesson for outsiders within New England's mostly white society. From Maria Negro in Charlestown to Tituba in Salem and then to Pomp in Andover one can read a history of control of non-white individuals through the legal process. It is likely that this is why Jonathan Plummer (1795) chose to record and publish the life and death of Pomp and to add about him that “[T]o crown his ignorance, he lost his life by not knowing that murder was a sin, he expecting that he should immediately rise to good estate and great felicity whenever he should be fortunate enough to kill his master.”

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