The assessors found no estate on which to levy for the taxes. In the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay, therefore, they required the "said Richard Collens to take into safe custody the body of the said John and Paul Cuffe and then commit to the common gaol of the said County of Bristol there to remain until they, the said John and Paul Cuffe shall pay and satisfy the above sum with all necessary charges" or be discharged by due process of law. The constable followed the instructions and reported on December 19 that he had placed the Cuffe brothers in the common gaol in Taunton. For this service, including travel for twenty-five "milds," he turned in a bill of twelve shillings, nine pence.
The next step in the legal battle was on the part of the Cuffe brothers. The keeper of the gaol or his underkeeper was directed on the nineteenth of December in the "Name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to have the bodies of John and Paul Cuffe said to be Indian men whom you have now in keeping before the Justices of our Inferior Court of Common Pleas now holden at Taunton for said County together with the cause of their and each of their Commitiment and Detention. Hereof fail not and make Return of this writ with your doings therein. Witness Walter Spooner Esqr." Elijah Dean, underkeeper, produced the two men on the same day that he received the writ of habeas corpus.
When the Court of General Sessions of the Peace met on the nineteenth of December it ordered on the petition of John and Paul Cuffe that the assessors of Dartmouth appear at the next term to show cause, wherefore the Prayer of said Petition should not be granted. The order was given to the sheriff of Bristol County on the twenty-ninth of December. The assessors, Benjamin Russell, Richard Kriby, Christopher Gifford, and John Smith were accordingly summoned by Elijah Dean. He served the warrant on the twenty-sixth of February and recorded his fee as twenty-four pence.
Meanwhile, on the twentieth of February the selectmen of Dartmouth were called on to choose an agent to defend the action against the Cuffe brothers. At their annual meeting on the eighth of March the Honorable Walter Spooner, a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention 1780, was chosen in behalf of the town to make answer to the petitioners in question. At the March meeting the case was continued and came up for action at the next meeting of the court.
In the meantime, John and Paul Cuffe made a request to the selectmen of Dartmouth. In the Cuffe papers three such requests are preserved. The one dated the twenty-fourth of April is followed by a notation attesting it a true copy of the request delivered to the selectmen. It asks them to "put a stroak on your next Warrant for calling a town meeting so that it may legally be Laid Before said town By way of voat to know the mine of said town whether all free Negroes and molattoes shall have the same Privileges in this said town of Dartmouth as the white People have Respecting Places of profit choosing of officers and the Like together with all other Privileges in all cases that shall or may happen or be Brought in this said town of Dartmouth or that we have Reliefe granted us Joyntly from Taxation which under our present depressed circumstances and your poor Petitioners as in duty Bound shall ever pay."
The disposition of the case as found in the records is contained in a few sentences. One is dated the eleventh of June and is signed by Richard Collens, constable. It reads as follows:
Then received of John Cuffe eight pounds twelve shillings silver money in full for all John Cuffe and Paul Cuffe Rates until this date and for all my court charges received by me.
Elijah Dean presented his bill for summoning the assessors. It was paid, and the bill with an acknowledgment from Edward Pope is entered in Cuffe's letter book with the tax receipt of the eleventh of June. The other laconic note is from the Records of the Court of General Sessions held at Taunton on June 12. It curtly "ordered that the Petition of Paul Cuffe and John Cuffe and the proceedings thereon be dismissed."
Several writers have commented on the significance of the petitions of the Cuffe brothers and their resistance to the payment of taxes. Practically all of them overestimate the matter. For example, a representative writer says, "This was a day equally honorable to the petitioners and to the legislature; a day in which justice and humanity triumphed over prejudice and oppression; a day which ought to be gratefully remembered by every person of color within the boundaries of Massachusetts, and the names of John and Paul Cuffe, should always be united with its recollection."[13]