People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1896 — Slavery Days In Indiana. [ARTICLE]

Slavery Days In Indiana.

Blackford Street Zion church was filled with colored people last night who have become in terested in the BookerT. Washington society’s meetings. The Walker Shaffer marriage at Muncie receutly—a case where a colored man married a white womar. awl was arrested and put under bond therefor—was indirectly under discussion. Two colored men from Muncie, W. H. Stokes and J. L. Burnham, were present. Stokes was criticised for introducing politics in the meeting in connection with his remarks. The society had invited William Watson Woolen to make an address on “Indiana’s Blacks and Black Laws.” He said: “I think it is not generally known that slavery ever existed in Indiana. Sept. 17, 1807, a law was approved by William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana territory, which provided that it should be law ful for any person being the owner or possessor of any negroes or mulattoes, owing service and labor as slaves in any of the states or territories, or for anycitizeu purchasing the same to bring said negroes or mulattoes into the territory, and that it should be iawful to hold such negro or mulatto to service or labor, if a male, until he arrived at the age of 35, and if a female, until she arrived at the age of' 32 years. It was further pro vided that the children horn in the territory of a parent of color owing service or labor, according to law. should serve the master or mistress of such parent, the male until the age of 30 aod the female until the age of 2H years. I do not find that these laws were repealed at any time by a territorial general as setnHfy. "The same legislature that enacted the foregoing laws enacted laws which provided for the Whipping post, for thepUlory, for branding criminals with a

red hot iron and capital punishment for the crimes of arson and horse stealing. It is to the credit of the first constitution of this state that these relics of barbarism were forever forbidden in the state, for by that con stitution it was expressly provided that cruel and unusual pun ishments should not be inflicted and that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servi tude in this state, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes, whoreof the party shall have been dully convicted, and be it further to the credit of that constitution that the words ■•negro” and “mulatto” do not occur in it. Notwithstanding . the provision against slavery, an attempt within four years after its enactment was made to fasten slavery upon this state by judge made law, in the case .of the state against Laselle. “Polly” was a colored woman who had been purchased from the Indians in the territory north-west of the river Ohio, previous to the treaty of Greenville, and was owned by Lasselle. She was brought before the circuit court of Knox county in obedience to a writ of habeas corpus and the validity of her bondage was recognized by that court. An appeal was taken in the supreme court, where she was discharged.”—From the Philadelphia Times.