The year 1773 saw increasing agitation among Blacks in Boston and Massachusetts for an end to slavery. On January 6, then in April, and again in May, they sent petitions first to royal General Thomas Gage and next to the Massachusetts legislature, denouncing slavery as destructive of natural rights and seeking the right to earn money to purchase their freedom. Finally, in 1780 slavery was abolished in Massachusetts when a Declaration of Rights was added to the state constitution. In 1781, as a result of court decision in the case Commonwealth v. Jennison, slavery in the state was declared unconstitutional.