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UNIV. OF
CAL

SKETCH OF THE LAWS

RELATING TO

SLAVERY

IN THE SEVERAL STATES

OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

BY GEORGE M. STROUD.

PHILADELPHIA :

PUBLISHED BY KIMBER AND SHARPLESS,

No. 93 Market Street.

I. Ashmead, Printer.

Eastern District of Pennsylvania, to wit:

L. S.

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the tenth day of October, in the fifty-second year of the Independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1827.

GEORGE M. STROUD, ESQ.

of the said district hath deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as author, in the words following, to wit:

A Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery in the several States of the United States of America. By George M. Stroud.

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States entitled, "An act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned."-And also to the act, entitled, "An act supplementary to an act, entitled, "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprie tors of such copies during the times therein mentioned," and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."

D. CALDWELL,

Clerk of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

THE state of slavery in this country, so far as it can be ascertained from the laws of the several independent sovereignties which belong to our confederacy, is the subject of the following sheets. This comprises a particular examination of the laws of the states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Missouri. With respect to the remaining states, slavery, in some, having been abolished, and in others, never tolerated, a cursory notice of a few of their laws, chiefly important for the evidence which they furnish of the right of these states to the appellation of non-slave-holding, is all which the title or object of this work requires.

The District of Columbia, though, in this connexion, not properly denominated, a state, yet, from its important character in being exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, deserves an equal share of attention. It happens, however, that this District in regard to slavery as well as many other topics, is not regulated, integrally, by a code of laws enacted for the purpose by Congress;-that body, having by an act, dated February 27th, 1801, declared, that, the part of the District of Columbia which had been ceded to the United States by the state of Virginia, should be governed by the laws which were then in force in Virginia, and the other part, which had been ceded by the state of Maryland, should in like manner be governed by the laws then in force in Maryland. But few alterations have been made in the laws affecting the condition of slaves in either of the states just named, since the date of the act of congress; the quotations, therefore, given from their respective codes, being applied in conformity with the distinction

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