Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session...1859.
A Compilation of Mississippi Session Laws Including A Response to an Enslavement Petition from a Free Woman of Color [Mississippi]. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, Held in the City of Jackson, November, 1859. Jackson: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1860. 608 pp. Octavo (8" x 5"). Later three-quarter sheep over marbled boards, lettering piece and black leather label to spine, Washington State Law Library label to foot of spine, endleaves renewed. Light rubbing, ink library stamps to front board and bottom-edge of text block, front joint starting at ends, rear joint cracked, corners lightly bumped and worn. Light toning to interior, occasional light foxing, trimming to fore-edge just touching text or side-notes on a few pages without loss to legibility. $350. * Official printing of laws passed by the Mississippi state legislature in 1859. The compilation includes the Mississippi state constitution as ratified in 1832 and a detailed table of contents and index. The amendments, resolutions and acts in the volume deal with a number of interesting topics, such as Native Americans and slavery. Also included is "An act for the benefit of Ann Mataw, a free woman of color." This act responded to a petition which stated that Mataw preferred "a residence as a slave in this state where she was born to a residence in a non-slaveholding state" and believed "that slavery with a humane owner is preferable to freedom in a free state...in view of the certainty that the legislation of the State, if not at the present session, will soon be such as to coerce all free persons of color to leave it" (Mataw). This is reflected in the text of the act, which states that Mataw's "absolute slavery" would "protect the said Ann from the penalties of the present or any future statute of the State in reference to free negroes and mulattoes" (353). Petitions for self-enslavement were rare. They enabled the petitioner to choose their owner and were often pursued in light of the harsh rules that governed the lives of free people of color in Southern states. Elizabeth G. Purdom, Mataw's chosen owner, was the wife of a circuit court clerk. In the census of 1860, she is listed as the owner of three slaves, including Mataw; it is possible that Mataw had familial or community ties to the other people.
Price: $350.00
Book number 82703