ICAR Research Data Repository for Knowledge Management

Petition subject: To pass several resolutions against slavery and discrimination

Original: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:11381159

Date of creation: 1845-01-20

Petition location: Boston

Legislator, committee, or address that the petition was sent to: Jasper Bement, Ashfield; committee on the annexation of Texas

Selected signatures:

1. Henry B. Stanton
2. Samuel E. Sewall
3. James G. Carter
4. Stephen P. Andrews
5. John Pierpont

Actions taken on dates: 1845-01-22,1845-01-22

Legislative action: Received in the House on January 22, 1845 and referred to the committee on the annexation of Texas and sent for concurrence and received in the Senate on January 22, 1845 and concurred

Total signatures: 5

Legislative action summary: Received, referred, sent, received, concurred

Legal voter signatures (males not identified as non-legal): 5

Female only signatures: No

Identifications of signatories: undersigned, appointed a committee by a large and respectable convention of citizens which recently assembled in the city of Boston to memorialized the Honorable Legislature with reference to the oppressions which still exist towards people of color and upon several subjects relating to the existence and tyrannical operations of slavery and the slave trade in and between some of the states of the American Union, ["a committee on slavery and the slave-trade; the imprisonment of our citizens in Maryland, South Carolina, and Florida; the annexation of Texas, and kindred subjects"]

Prayer format was printed vs. manuscript: Manuscript

Additional non-petition or unrelated documents available at archive: additional documents available

Additional archivist notes: act, prohibiting the levying of any tax or assessment to be applied to the maintenance of schools for children of color exclusively and to prohibit the exclusion of any person on account of his color or race from any of the public schools, academies, colleges or other institutions of learning in this state, taxation, penalties, teacher, act against any person citizen or resident of this state to hold a slave or claim or exercise authority over a human being as a slave in any part of the world, emancipation, act against any person to pass or receive a title deed or mortgage of a slave or any other legal instrument relating to and organizing human beings as property, all contracts on price of slaves sold or that depend on recognition of the right of property in man shall be null and void, courts, act against any person bringing or introducing a man woman or child into the state from detaining or exercising authority over such person as a slave, act to authorize anyone held as a slave in any part of the world to sue for and recover his wages quantum meruit, act to arrest and imprison all persons with intent to kidnap and carry into bondage any citizen or resident of the state, personal liberty laws, 1843, act extending penalties imposed upon sheriffs and other officers for aiding in the arrest of persons claimed as fugitive slaves, act for any citizen who has been or may be imprisoned in South Carolina on account of his color to bring action for false imprisonment to recover damages, proper protest to Maryland on outrage against Reverend Charles T. Torrey, Algiers, gratitude and honor, barbarous laws, strikes at the freedom of conscience and the press, renew its protest against the annexation of Texas as a slaveholding territory, memorialize Congress, kidnapping and piracy, ship, vessel, penalties for returning to bondage any person found on the high seas, against national ships receiving or detaining any person as a slave, national naval service, business of aiding in the arrest of fugitive slaves, relief of the family of Jonathan Walker of Harwich, barbarous and disgraceful infliction of punishment upon him, prohibiting inter-state slave trade and abolishing slavery and the slave trade and to repeal laws inflicting cruel and unusual punishment such as branding, scourging, standing in the pillory, Florida, District of Columbia, Washington D.C., law requiring the president to instruct U.S. district attorneys to bring before the United States Courts on habeas corpus and procure discharge of citizens of any state who may be imprisoned within the limits of any state on the ground of color or race, [many more details in document text, see images]

Location of the petition at the Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth: Senate Unpassed 1845, Docket 11671

Acknowledgements: Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-5105612), Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, Institutional Development Initiative at Harvard University, and Harvard University Library.