Henry Brent and Walter Jones, residents of the District of Columbia, petition the Tennessee legislature to direct Tennessee representatives in Congress to support a redrafting of the District's charter to give greater attention to the activities of people of color. They report that the "existing charter" addressed having power to institute "an effective police over disorderly and dangerous persons of various descriptions, comprehending slaves by name" and in particular restraining and prohibiting "the nightly and other disorderly meetings of slaves, free negroes and mulattoes" and "to punish the slaves by whipping and imprisonment, the free negroes and mulattoes by pecuniary fines." They argue, however, that the framer of the new charter deliberately omitted the mention of slaves which would amount "to a disclaimer or renunciation by Congress of any such condition as slavery, of any such property as slaves" and it would "have been equivalent to an admission of the ... ultra doctrines of the most ultra abolitionists."
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Repository: Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee
