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[CHAPTER 18]
[Page 1]
“TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION….”
The civil rights and privileges of freed or free-born Negroes were clearly defined in Article 52 of the Code Noir, which declared that
…acts for the enfranchisement of slaves…shall be equivalent to an act of naturalization, when said slaves are not born in our colony of Louisiana, and they shall enjoy all the rights and privileges inherent to our subjects born in our kingdom or in any land or country under our dominion.1
The rights of the people of this class gradually increased under the Spanish regime, which began in 1763, and remained at this point when the colony was receded to France in 1803. When the Louisiana Territory was sold to the United States during that same year, the Treaty of Cession between that country and the French Republic declared in Article 3 that the inhabitants of the colony were entitled to “the enjoyment of all rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States.”2
The dissatisfaction of the whites over the threatened stoppage of the African slave trade, and Article 4 of the treaty, the 4th section of the act providing for the temporary government of Louisiana, which denied them “any participation whatever” in the governing of the Orleans Territory, arose to such heights that a public meeting was called in 1804 for the purpose of drafting a memorial to Congress. When the second meeting of this group was held in early July,3 the free people of color, assuming that the rights and privileges of Article 3 also applied to them, began to show signs of indignation because they had not been invited to participate in either of the assemblies. A free man of color, who was an “influential character” among his people, wrote an
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