Description:

Slavery

Slavery broadsheet circular signed by LA Gov. rejecting emancipation resolution. Rare!

2pp partly handwritten and partly printed DS with integral address leaf signed by 5th Governor of Louisiana Henry S. Johnson as "H. Johnson" at center of third page. Docket inscription found on address leaf bearing handwritten and stamped philatelic markings. In very good to near fine condition, with expected folds. Isolated minor repairs, notably to gutter and area once corresponding to seal. Each page measures 7.875" x 9.75".


From the Executive Department at New Orleans, Louisiana on February 16, 1826, Governor Johnson reported to "His Excellency The Governor of the State of Pennsylvania" that Louisiana had rejected the January 17, 1824 Ohio Resolution. "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Louisiana, in General Assembly convened, That this Legislature does not concur in certain resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of Ohio, at their session in the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-four, proposing a plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves…"


The controversial resolution introduced at the Ohio General Assembly two years earlier had proposed the gradual emancipation of slaves contingent on their removal to West Africa.  All "people of color, held in servitude in the United States" born after passage of the law would be manumitted at age 21 and transported to colonies overseas. Ohioans believed that this resolution would neither "violat[te] the national compact" nor "infring[e upon] the rights of individuals". Furthermore, the resolution was "predicated upon the principle that the evil of slavery is a national one, and that the people and the states of this union ought mutually to participate in the duties and burthens of removing it." Johnson hereby announced that Louisianans disagreed.


Emancipation was strictly a states' rights issue up until the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, yet States were hyperaware of the legislative decisions of their "Sisters". Most of New England had already passed gradual emancipation legislation by 1804, while Cotton Belt states that relied heavily on slave labor rejected any plans for systematic emancipation. The Mid-Atlantic and border states had mixed reactions to abolition. The response of states to the Ohio Resolution further entrenched regional divisions and loyalties leading up until the Civil War.


Henry S. Johnson (1783-1864), like so many aspiring politicians, began his professional career as a lawyer. He assumed the governorship of Louisiana between 1824-1828, on the coattails of his first six-year-long tenure as Mississippi Senator. As Governor, Johnson attempted to reconcile cultural, social, and political tensions between Anglo and French Creole constituents.


An exceptional document capturing the antebellum slavery debate!


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