In the 18th and 19th centuries, Black activists in Newburyport fought to end slavery through lawsuits, editorials, petitions, and organized abolitionist work while also demanding equality, dignity, and justice. In 1773, Caesar Hendrick filed an early freedom lawsuit against his enslaver Richard Greenleaf and won his freedom, then later served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Three years later, Pomp Somerset also sued Greenleaf and won freedom, and Jenny Slew, Sier Kimball, Adventurer, and others also brought freedom suits. In 1774, Caesar Sarter, who had been enslaved for more than 20 years, published an anti-slavery essay in the Essex Journal and Merrimack Packet condemning the hypocrisy of colonists seeking liberty from England while denying it to enslaved people. Such acts of resistance accelerated the legal end of slavery in Massachusetts in the 1780s. A second wave of abolitionism emerged before the Civil War as sectional tensions grew. In 1834, Andrew Raymond, a young Black barber from Newburyport's Guinea neighborhood, took part in the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, and by 1847 he was president of the Newburyport and Vicinity Anti-Slavery Society. In contrast, Senator Daniel Webster supported the Compromise of 1850, condemning abolition societies, while many white men in Newburyport publicly praised his leadership even though the measure expanded slavery into western territories and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1853, Andrew Raymond and 80 Black residents petitioned the legislature against funding a State House statue of Webster, helping delay its installation for six years. Raymond died at age 56 on January 8, 1857, before slavery was abolished, but he and other Black men and women helped lay the groundwork for freedom.