Source: Indiana 1816-1850 THE PIONEER ERA Vol. II., by Donald F. Carmine
ISBN 1-8795-124-X. - ISBN 0-87195-125-8 (pbk), 1998, page 834
note 205: Laws of Indiana (revised) 1830-1831, pp. 375-376; Thornburg,
The Negro in Indiana, 55-63. The 1831 law is repeated in Revised
Statues, 1837-38, pp. 418-419.
This restrictive legislation was strongly condemned by seven senators who
interpreted the Indiana constitution that "all men are born equally free,
independent and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights"
as embracing blacks. The protesters were James Blair, Calvin Fletcher,
Samuel Frisbie, Amaziah Morgan, Abel Lomax, John Sering, and Daniel Worth
- all anti-Jacksonians or Adams men according to "Biographical Directory
of the Indiana General Assembly", I, 455. At the ensuing legistslative
session, a report from the judiciary committee, submitted by Senator James
Whitcomb, virgorously defended the restrictive law of 1831. With various
states, both slave and free, trying to prohibit or at least restrict the
presents of blacks, the report said that before its passage the "influx"
of blacks "was a daily and rapidly augmenting," often with "aged and affirmed
slaves" who had been freed among those coming to the state. Such a population,
the report predicted, would threaten "the peace of society, the contamination
of public morals, an increased number of paupers with a corresponding increase
of taxation.," and bring "the danger of that gradual amalgamation of the
species... which the canons of nature seems to forbid."
Whitcomb was a die hard Jackson man.
received 4 Nov 1998 from Steve Smelser
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