Cont................................. Article I. Slavery shall be and shall remain abolished in every country under French rule in the manner described in the following articles. Men, arriving there, shall be free and shall there enjoy all of their rights. II. The slave trade is and shall remain abolished upon publication of this decree. All Blacks who arrive or who are brought to French colonies or to any other part of the realm, by any means or by any person, shall be free six months after said publication. III. All of the slaves currently residing in the French colonies shall be successively freed and placed at liberty over a sixteen year period, one-sixteenth each year, the first being freed upon publication of this decree. IV. Slaves above the age of seventy shall be the first to be freed. However they shall remain the charges of their masters who shall be required to feed and care for them, or to provide an annual stipend for their feeding and care in a charity home that shall be built for that purpose. V. Married slaves who have the most children shall be the next to be freed, and freedom shall be granted to all members of the family at the same time. As freed fathers and mothers, their children can not be slaves. VI. Children on a property below the age of fifteen having neither father nor mother shall continue to be raised and fed until the time established for the complete end of slavery. Then, steps shall be taken to provide for their subsistence and any payments that may be due to the masters that have fed them, without their making a profit from it. VII. All Blacks who have worked for twenty years on the same property or who are forty years of age and not able to earn a living and who prefer to remain shall be fed. This shall also apply to the disabled and ill on a property. If they do not like their masters, their subsistence shall be paid for in the charity home to be built. VIII. The slaves who shall be freed shall enjoy, from that moment on, all of the benefits of the law to contract, sell, purchase and make commerce as well as all of the other rights of a citizen. IX. From this day, the Black Code is and shall remain abolished and repealed as inhuman and barbarous. It is forbidden for property foremen, masters, and slave drivers to punish [Blacks] or have them punished, or to arbitrarily strike them or have them struck by reason of their authority for any motive or pretext. And it is forbidden for any person to claim the right to inflict any sort of punishment on [the Blacks], and from this moment on they are placed under the protection of the law. X. A legal system shall be established in each quarter that shall be made up of eight notables who, without remuneration, will deal exclusively with the problems concerning the Blacks in conformance with the law which shall be passed. The notables must be a majority of five in order to pass judgment. XI. The master who has reason to complain about his slave may not dispense his own justice as stated in Article IX at the risk of punishment in accordance with the requirements of the case. He shall be required to refer to the system of justice previously mentioned. XII. Blacks shall be allowed to marry amongst themselves regardless of their master's opposition. That is to say those who profess the Catholic religion in accordance with the conventions prescribed by the Church and the laws of the realm, the others following the conventions established for non-Catholics. The master to whom the man belongs shall be obliged to purchase the woman should she belong to another master, or, if he prefers, may sell the other master his Black at a set price, in order that [the couple] may live together. They shall be given a separate cabana. XIII. It is expressly forbidden to require the wife to work during the last six weeks of her pregnancy and during the first six weeks after delivery. XIV. The master who best treats those living on his property shall receive a reward that shall be decided by factoring in how many children where born there and the number and gender of his slaves. XV. Property belonging to all persons of color who die without children and without having disposed of their property shall be given to the black family having the most children who have neither property nor means of subsistence. If the property is large, it shall be divided in as many portions as deemed necessary for each family. The poorest, and those with the most children, shall receive preference. XVI. If there are infertile or abandoned grounds that are applicable, they shall be divided and distributed as those identified in the previous Article and it shall be passed to new colonists if deemed necessary for the first year of ground clearing. XVII. The commissioners chosen and appointed to oversee the execution of this decree, shall see to the means of ensuring the subsistence of the newly-freed slaves, in order to attach them to the soil through ownership, and to [seal] the principles of humanity and justice, with all that those ideas can bring to the safety and prosperity of the colonies. Source: Jean-Louis Viefville des Essars, Discours et projet de loi pour l'affranchissement des negr�s ou l'adoucissement de leur r�gime, et r�ponse aux objections des colons (Paris, n.d.). Courtesy of www.chnm.gmu.edu/revolution Other Primary Document Main Page Site Map |