Boston Slave Revolt, 2050

In the year of our lord, 2050, a great slave revolt shook the City of Boston, a slave trade hub since the 17th century. Since the defeat of Union army in 1865, and the restoration of slavery in North America, no such slave revolt had rocked the nation that had once come to the brink of abolishing slavery. The slave auction in the historic Faneuil Hall was held every Saturday and the new batch of slaves were brought in cargo airplanes mostly from Africa, but also the Caribbean islands. By then, the number of black slaves in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had reached well above one hundred thousand, and the runaway slaves were punished harshly. Special police officers and bounty hunters were tracking the fugitive slaves who used the socalled underground railroad to escape to safety in Canada, which had abolished slavery in the late 19th century, although new forms of slavery had mushroomed there, particularly in the northwest territory that was relatively innocent of the rule of law. The American anti-slavery abolitionists kept their struggle to free as many slaves as possible, i.e., a mission impossible. In the Irish-dominated South Boston, there were occasional reports of lynching, which more often than not escaped the attention of local police. According to one estimate, of the 350 cases of reported lynching, only 3 were ever brought to justice. The conservative courts let the murderes off the hook and blocked every effort for peaceful evolution of a post-salvery America.

But the situation changed when a group of prisoner slaves mobilized the slave population of a prison and set the place ablaze before fleeing in what turned out to be the biggest manhunt in the state for many decades. Some were found to be hiding in Harvard yard and were handed to the police, who brutalized them before dispatching them in chains back to their detention. One notable exception, however, was a North African slave known as Elijah who escaped by severing his right hand from the handcuff that had tied him to a chair in a bus en route to the court, and he triggered the great revolt that ended triumphantly for the entire slave population in Massachusetts and created a new group of white slaves who were subjected to humiliating mistreatment by their unforgiving new black masters. Their revolt was, however, shortlived and the federal government succeeded in smashing the revolt and decimating its leadership within a precious few months. Elijah, on the other hand, continued to evade the authorities for a solid year and was finally discovered in a far away cabin in rural Maine. After a lenghty detention, he suffered a public execution in Boston's public garden, in order to send a stern message to other would-be-slave revolters. For a number of years that worked and there was no more slave revolt, until the war of 2056 when the American expeditionary army to Cuba was once again defeated. But, by then Elijad was awaiting execution and unable to meet his followers' expectation. He passed the baton of slave revolt to his son, who died in action at the tender age of 25. All those sacrifices ultimately proved futile and the white supremacist race ruling America was able to maintain their slavery exploits for another generation. A new crop of anti-slavery activists emerged who made a decent inroad toward a legal abolition of slavery and, sadly, they too like Abraham Lincoln before them, failed to realize their political ambition. In a word, the status quo proved to be too resilient to change, peacefully or violently.

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