Sixty citizens of Delaware seek the repeal of an 1811 law titled "An Act to prohibit the emigration of free negroes or free mulattoes into this State." The law, the petitioners argue, is "not only unjust, oppressive and rigorous, but likewise highly impolitic." The law subjects a "portion of the Community equally entitled by nature and our free Constitution to the rights and privileges of their Fellow Citizens ... to grievous penalties and imprisonment, without the perpetration of any Crime, or the breach of any moral Law." The petitioners, "with a view to the honour of the State, and earnestly solicitous that our Code of Laws may not retain a Statute so incompatible with the just Rights of Freemen, ... ask for the repeal of this Act."
Result: House: read, referred to committee.
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Repository: Delaware State Archives, Dover, Delaware
