DOI: 10.7910/dvn/gfidm
title: Passed Resolves; Resolves 1858, c.044, SC1/series 228, Petition of John T. Hilton

description: &lt;p&gt;Petition subject: Dred Scott decision &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Original: &lt;a href="http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:10455891"&gt;http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:10455891&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Date of creation: 1858-02-23 &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Petition location: Boston &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Legislator, committee, or address that the petition was sent to: John A. Andrew, Boston; committee on federal relations &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Selected signatures:&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;John T. Hilton&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Joel W. Lewis&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Jonas W. Clark&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;M.R. DeMortie [Mark R. De Mortie]&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Robert Johnson&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Nelson Perkins&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;W.H. Logan [William H. Logan]&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;William Johnson&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Lewis Hayden&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;William C. Nell&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;John J. Smith&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Actions taken on dates: 1858-03-03,1858-03-06 &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Legislative action: Received in the House on March 3, 1858 and referred to the committee on federal relations and received in the Senate on March 6, 1858 and concurred &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Total signatures: 11 &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Legislative action summary: Received, referred, received, concurred &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Males of color signatures: 11 &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Female only signatures: No &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Identifications of signatories: freemen and citizens of Massachusetts, impartially enjoying and exercising the elective franchise with all other citizens, notwithstanding complexional differences, and recognized by the Constitution of the state, and the laws thereof, as entitled to equal rights and privileges, and to a common protection, undersigned, colored citizens, in behalf of a meeting of a large number of their colored fellow citizens of Boston and vicinity, president, vice presidents, secretaries, [males of color] &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Prayer format was &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing"&gt;printed&lt;/a&gt; vs. &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuscript"&gt;manuscript&lt;/a&gt;: Manuscript &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Additional non-petition or unrelated documents available at archive: additional documents available &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Additional archivist notes: large and spirited meeting of the colored citizens, Joy Street meeting house, vindication of their rights, unanimously adopted, officers of the meeting, committee to present it to the legislature, shocked and outraged, dearest rights cloven down, supreme court, citizens, citizenship, violation, union, protested, resisted, usurpation, tyranny, Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis of Massachusetts, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, sue, federal courts, without protection or redress as citizens of the United States, reversed, or change in structure of Supreme Court, divorced from the Union, deprived of privileges and immunities, high handed act of judicial usurpation, slaveholding oligarchy to uproot all the institutions and overthrow all the safeguards of Northern freedom, great moral degradation, most abject cowardice, not to be binding, immediate reversal, laws, Southern states, visiting, seized in Southern ports, imprisonment, sold into slavery, South Carolina, Louisiana, commissioner, legal redress, lacked the courage to vindicate the rights of her colored citizens, leaving them a prey to the oppressed, fresh strong and united effort, self defense, Southern outrage, every slaveholder coming into this state shall be instantly arrested and kept in prison, formation of a free and independent republic, [William C. Nell's handwriting; first page crossed out], [“Your memoralists deem it wholly unnecessary to adduce any arguments to show either the injustice of the absurdity of the decision aforesaid. From the adoption of the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780, to the present time, the state has disfranchised no man on account of his color; nor does a single law remain on her statute book prejudicial to the rights or interests of any man, or class of men, on the ground of complexional differences. If we are not citizens of Massachusetts, then the Commonwealth is without citizens; and if, as such, we are not citizens of the United States, then by the same rule, there are no such citizens, and only a privileged aristocracy at the North, and a detestable slave oligarchy at the South, remain to rule over a subjugated people. To deny that those who are native born and personally free – whose blood has been freely poured out on every battle field from the earliest to the latest conflict in behalf of American liberty and independence - who are eligible to every office in the gift of the people - by whose suffrages, in common with all others entitled to vote, the Constitution of the United States was adopted, the government brought into existence and put in operation, every President elected from George Washington to James Buchanan, and the Constitutions of many of the states ratified - who are found at the polls at every election, whether to vote for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, members of the Legislature, or Representatives to Congress - of whom allegiance and taxation are as strictly exacted as of the white inhabitants, and who have never been found wanting in the performance of their obligations and duties, but have always shown themselves to be animated by the most patriotic feelings – to deny that such are, or can be, citizens of the United States, in accordance with the plain meaning of the Constitution, is to outrage the common sense of mankind, and most wickedly to pervert judgment, that the foundations of freedom may be destroyed.”], ["...or at least without a manly assertion of their unconstitutional rights..."] &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Location of the petition at the Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth: Resolves 1858, c.44, passed March 27, 1858 &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Acknowledgements: Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-5105612), Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, Institutional Development Initiative at Harvard University, and Harvard University Library.&lt;/p&gt;