Act 1717, Chap. 13, Sec. 5—Provides that any free colored person marrying a slave, becomes a slave for life, except mulattoes born of white women.
DELAWARE.—Laws.—More than six men slaves, meeting together, not belonging to one master, unless on lawful business of their owners, may be whipped to the extent of twenty-one lashes each.—p. 104.
UNITED STATES.—Constitution.—The chief pro-slavery provisions of the constitution, as is generally known, are, 1st, that by virtue of which the slave states are represented in congress for three-fifths of their slaves;[7] 2nd, that requiring the giving up of any runaway slaves to their masters; 3rd, that pledging the physical force of the whole country to suppress insurrections, i. e., attempts to gain freedom by such means as the framers of the instrument themselves used.
Act of Feb. 12, 1793—Provides that any master or his agent may seize any person whom he claims as a "fugitive from service," and take him before a judge of the U. S. court, or magistrate of the city or county where he is taken, and the magistrate, on proof, in support of the claim, to his satisfaction, must give the claimant a certificate authorizing the removal of such fugitive to the state he fled from.[8]
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.—The act of congress incorporating Washington city, gives the corporation power to prescribe the terms and conditions on which free negroes and mulattoes may reside in the city. City Laws, 6 and 11. By this authority, the city in 1827 enacted that any free colored person coming there to reside, should give the mayor satisfactory evidence of his freedom, and enter into bond with two freehold sureties, in the sum of five hundred dollars, for his good conduct, to be renewed each year for three years; or failing to do so, must leave the city, or be committed to the workhouse, for not more than one year, and if he still refuse to go, may be again committed for the same period, and so on.—Ib. 198.
Colored persons residing in the city, who cannot prove their title to freedom, shall be imprisoned as absconding slaves.—Ib. 198.
Colored persons found without free papers may be arrested as runaway slaves, and after two months' notice, if no claimant appears, must be advertised ten days, and sold to pay their jail fees.[9]—Stroud, 85, note.
The city of Washington grants a license to trade in slaves, for profit, as agent, or otherwise, for four hundred dollars.—City Laws, p. 249.
Reader, you uphold these laws while you do nothing for their repeal. You can do much. You can take and read the anti-slavery journals. They will give you an impartial history of the cause, and arguments with which to convert its enemies. You can countenance and aid those who are laboring for its promotion. You can petition against slavery; you can refuse to vote for slaveholders or pro-slavery men, constitutions and compacts; can abstain from products of slave labor; and can use your social influence to spread right principles and awaken a right feeling. Be as earnest for freedom as its foes are for slavery, and you can diffuse an anti-slavery sentiment through your whole neighborhood, and merit "the blessing of them that are ready to perish."