[Certification Document Affirming the Freedom of a Young Mulatto Woman Following "An Act Concerning Free Negroes, Mulattoes and Slaves," Passed by the Corporation of the City of Washington]

Washington DC: October 31, 1827. Very good.. Partially-printed form, completed in manuscript, 4 x 7.5 inches. Old folds, one fold line reinforced on verso, some foxing and minor staining. An impactful document from early-19th-century America, confirming the right of "Julia Haines, a mulatto woman about 22 years old" to "reside in the said city of Washington" after she provided "satisfactory evidence of the legality of her title to freedom." Haines applied for recognition of her freedom following an act of the city of Washington "entitled 'An act concerning free negroes, mulattoes and slaves,' passed on the thirty-first day of May in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-seven." The document is embossed with the seal of the City of Washington, and signed by the registrar of the city, William Hewitt. A cryptic manuscript in the left margin reads, "Eliza Ann & Wm Francis her children rec'd - Oct. 31, 1827" and is initialed "C.H.G." This note might relate to Julia's former owners or perhaps a new family with whom she is living in Washington. The present document stands as a powerful reminder of the separate laws that governed African Americans in antebellum America (and in certain cases afterwards). The document is basically a certification that allowed Julia Haines to move around the city of Washington, but only after proving her freedom -- something no white person has ever had to do in the history of this country. According to the provisions of the act in question, should free persons of color fail to provide "satisfactory evidence" of their "title to freedom," they "shall be committed to the jail of the County of Washington, as absconding slaves." We could not locate any examples of this partially-printed document in OCLC, but at least one other copy resides at Howard, for a thirty-one-year-old woman named Eliza Washington. (Inventory #: 6001)