A Bill to Abolish Slavery in the District of Columbia
January 1849
Lincoln, Abraham. A Bill to Abolish Slavery in the
District of Columbia January 1849, manuscript. Abraham Lincoln Papers,
1 March 2002. American Memory. Library of Congress. 24 January 2009
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mal&fileName=mal1/004/0042500/malpage.db&recNum=0
TRANSCRIPTION (Page 1)
Abraham Lincoln, [January 1849] (A Bill to Abolish Slavery in the
District of Columbia)
Abraham Lincoln, A Bill for Abolishing Slavery in the District of
Columbia [Draft]1, [January 1849]
A bill for an act to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia,
by the consent of the free white people of said District, and with
compensation to owners--
Section 1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America, in Congress assembled: That no
person not now within the District of Columbia, nor now owned by
any person or persons now resident within it, nor hereafter born
within it, shall ever be held in slavery within said District--
Section 2. That no person now within said District, or now owned
by any person, or persons now resident within the same, or hereafter
born within it, shall ever be held in slavery without the limits
of said District: Provided, that officers of the government of the
United States, being citizens of the slave-holding states, coming
into said District on public business, and remaining only so long
as may be reasonably necessary for that object, may be attended
into, and out of, said District, and while there, by the necessary
servants of themselves and their families, without their right to
hold such servants in service, being thereby impaired--
Section 3. That all children born of slave mothers within said District
on, or after the first day of January in the year of our Lord one
thousand, eight hundred and fifty…
(continued on page 2)
TRANSCRIPTION (Page 2)
Abraham Lincoln, [January 1849] (A Bill to Abolish Slavery in the
District of Columbia)
Abraham Lincoln, A Bill for Abolishing Slavery in the District of
Columbia [Draft]1, [January 1849]
shall be free; but shall be reasonably supported and educated, by
the respective owners of their mothers or by their heirs or representatives,
and shall owe reasonable service, as apprentices, to such owners,
heirs and representatives until they respectively arrive at the
age of ... years when they shall be entirely free; and the municipal
authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective
jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to make
all suitable and necessary provisions for enforcing obedience to
this section, on the part of both masters and apprentices--
Section 4. That all persons now within said District lawfully held
as slaves, or now owned by any person or persons now resident within
said District, shall remain such, at the will of their respective
owners, their heirs and legal representatives: Provided that any
such owner, or his legal representative, may at any time receive
from the treasury of the United States the full value of his or
her slave, of the class in this section mentioned, upon which such
slave shall be forthwith and forever free: and provided further
that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State,
and the Secretary of the Treasury shall be a board for determining
the value of such slaves as their owners may desire to emancipate
under this section; and whose duty it shall be to hold a session
for the the purpose, on the first monday of each calender month;
to…
(continued on page 3)
TRANSCRIPTION (Page 3)
Abraham Lincoln, [January 1849] (A Bill to Abolish Slavery in the
District of Columbia)
Abraham Lincoln, A Bill for Abolishing Slavery in the District of
Columbia [Draft]1, [January 1849]
receive all applications; and, on satisfactory evidence in each
case, that the person presented for valuation, is a slave, and of
the class in this section mentioned, and is owned by the applicant,
shall value such slave at his or her full cash value, and give to
the applicant an order on the treasury for the amount; and also
to such slave a certificate of freedom--
Section 5 That the municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown,
within their respective jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered
and required to provide active and efficient means to arrest, and
deliver up to their owners, all fugitive slaves escaping into said
District--
Section 6 That the election officers of within said District of
Columbia, are hereby empowered and required to open polls at all
the usual places of holding elections, on the first monday of April
next, and receive the vote of every free white male citizen above
the age of twentyone years, having resided within said District
for the period of one year or more next preceding the time of such
voting, for, or against this act; to proceed, in taking said votes,
in all respects not herein specified, as at elections under the
municipal laws; and, with as little delay as possible, to transmit
corect statements of the votes so cast to the President of the United
States. And it shall be the duty of the President to canvass…
(continued on page 4)
TRANSCRIPTION (Page 4)
Abraham Lincoln, [January 1849] (A Bill to Abolish Slavery in the
District of Columbia)
Abraham Lincoln, A Bill for Abolishing Slavery in the District of
Columbia [Draft]1, [January 1849]
…said votes immediately, and, if a majority of them be found
to be for this act, to forthwith issue his proclamation giving notice
of the fact; and this act shall only be in full force and effect
on, and after the day of such proclamation--
Section 7. That involuntary servitude for the punishment of crime,
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall in no wise
be prohibited by this act--
Section 8. That for all the purposes of this act the jurisdictional
limits of Washington are extended to all parts of the District of
Columbia not now included within the present limits of Georgetown--
[ The following two fragments are apparently Lincoln's experimentation
with language with which to introduce his substitute resolution:]
Strike out all before and after the word "Resolved" and
insert the following, towit: That the Committee on the District
of Columbia be instructed to report a bill in substance as follows,
towit:
Strike out all after the enacting clause, and insert the following,
towit:
[Note 1: As early as 1837, Lincoln had asserted that he considered
slavery to be founded on "injustice and bad policy," and
that though Congress had a right to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia, it should not exercise that right without the assent
of the District's citizens (see Collected Works, I, 74-76). Later,
when a member of Congress he voted several times in favor of the
Wilmot Proviso, which would prevent the extension of slavery into
the territory acquired from Mexico. Like many members of the Congress
and visitors, he considered the overt conduct of the slave trade
in Washington D. C. to be a national embarrassment. At this point
Lincoln's anti-slavery stance was apparent, but not emphatic. However,
issues which would lead to the crisis of 1850 arising from the status
of slavery in the Mexican cession were already becoming heated during
the second session of Lincoln's term in the House, and they were
dividing Whigs, just before the inauguration of Zachary Taylor.
With the encouragement of abolitionist Congressman Joshua Giddings,
who boarded with Lincoln at Mrs. Sprigg's, Lincoln proposed this
measure as a compromise which might at least unite Whigs. It was
first offered as a substitute for an earlier resolution that the
House Committee on the District of Columbia report a bill simply
calling for the abolition of slavery in the District without mention
of a referendum. Three days later Lincoln gave notice of his intention
to introduce such a bill as is drafted here, by himself. (See the
account in the Congressional Globe, reprinted in Collected Works,
II, 20-22.) But Lincoln did not introduce the bill. He told James
Q. Howard in 1860 that he had called on the mayor of Washington
and "and others whom I thought best acquainted with the sentiments
of the people" and gained assurances that his plan would be
well received and supported. "Being informed that it would
meet with their hearty approbation I gave notice in congress that
I should introduce a Bill. Subsequently I learned that many leading
southern members of Congress, had been to see the Mayor, and the
others who favored my Bill, and had drawn them over to their way
of thinking. Finding that I was abandoned by my former backers and
having little personal influence, I dropped the matter knowing that
it was useless to prosecute the business at that time." See
James Q. Howard, Biographical Notes, June 1860.]
|
