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A PETITION OF ABSALOM JONES AND OTHERS
[Philadelphia 30th of December 1799]
Background
Among the most significant landmark documents in the history of Congress are those from the
people themselves. The last clause of the First Amendment provides for the right of the people to
“petition the government for a redress of grievances. “Many citizens took this right seriously
and Congress received thousands of petitions on a wide variety of topics. The petitions from the
first quarter century of the federal government are in a special category because they often
helped determine in a very direct manner the development legislation that was of particular
concern to private citizens. They reveal as few other records can the popular will in the shaping
of the new government. This does not mean, however, that Congress always took the advice of
the petitioners and provided the relief sought. In the petition that follows, regarding the Fugitive
Slave Act of1793, some relief resulted, but Congress ignored the larger issues of the slave trade.
In one of the earliest surviving appeals to Congress from free black citizens, Absalom Jones and
seventy fellow signatories confronted the House of Representatives with a potentially divisive
issue that most legislators hoped to avoid These Philadelphia residents, fifty of whom signed the
petitions with only their marks, maintained that infringements of the Fugitive Slave Act
threatened the lives and welfare of African Americans, both slave and free. In seeking revision of
the statute and protection for those abducted by slave traders, the petitioners reminded the
House of Representatives that the Constitution never referred to slaves or African Americans
and by inference extended rights to all Americans regardless of race. While hesitating to call for
an immediate end to slavery, the Philadelphia free men of color assumed the responsibility of
defending the rights of all African Americans. Their constitutional defense would become a
hallmark of black abolitionists in the nineteenth century.
The report of the select committee appointed to consider the American slave trade confirmed the
illegal abduction of slaves from Maryland and Delaware and recommended revisions in the
Fugitive Slave Act. Outside the select committee, few representatives wished to reopen the
inflammatory issues of the internal slave trade an federal protection of slave property. The
House, meeting in the Committee of the Whole and citing the Constitution’s prohibition on
ending the slave trade before 1808, declined any action on a subject which the majority
concluded had ”a tendency to create disquiet and jealousy. “This determination to avoid
sectional division led the House to reject or ignore the growing number of anti-slavery petitions
that Congress received in the first five decades of the nineteenth century.
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A PETITION OF ABSALOM JONES AND OTHERS
[Philadelphia 30th of December 1799]
To the President, Senate, and House of Representatives of the United States.
The petition of the People of Colour, Freemen, within the City and Suburbs of Philadelphia:
Humbly sheweth That thankful to God our Creator and to the Government under which we live,
for the blessing and benefit extended to us in the enjoyment of our natural right to Liberty, and
the protection of our Persons and property from the oppression and violence, to which so great a
number of like colour and National Descent are subjected; We feel ourselves bound from a sense
of these blessings to continue in our respective allotments, and to lead honest and peaceable
lives, rendering due submission to the Laws, and exciting and encouraging each other thereto,
agreeable to the uniform advice of our real friends of every denomination. Yet, while we feel
impress’d with grateful sensations for the Providential favours we ourselves enjoy, We cannot be
insensible of the condition of our afflicted Brethren, suffering under various circumstances in
different parts of these States; but deeply sympathizing with them, We are incited by a sense of
Social duty and humbly conceive ourselves authorized to address and petition you in their behalf,
believing them to be objects of representation in your public Councils, in common with
ourselves and every other class of Citizens within the Jurisdiction of the United States, according
to the declared design of the present Constitution, formed by the
General Convention and ratified by the different States, as set forth in the preamble thereto in the
following words viz. ‘We the People of the United States in order to form a more perfect union,
establish Justice, insure domestick tranquility, provide for the Common Defence, and to secure
the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and posterity, do ordain “ We apprehend this solemn
Compact is violated by a trade carried on in a clandestine manner to the Coast of Guinea, and
another equally wicked practiced openly by Citizens of some of the Southern States upon the
waters of Maryland and Delaware: Men sufficiently callous as to qualify for the brutal purpose,
are employed in kidnapping those of our Brethren that are free, and purchasing others of such as
claim a property in them; thus these poor helpless victims like droves of Cattle are seized,
fettered, and hurried into places provided for this most horrid traffic, such as dark cellars and
garrets, as is notorious at Northwest Fork[,} Chester-town, Eastown, and divers other places;
After a sufficient number is obtained, they are forced on board vessels, crouded under hatches,
and without the least commiseration, left to deplore the sad separation of the dearest ties in
nature, husband from wife and Parents from children, thus pack’d together they are transported
to Georgia and other places, and there inhumanly exposed to sale: Can any Commerce, trade, or
transaction, so detestably shock the feelings of Man, or degrade the dignity of his nature equal to
this, and how increasingly is the evil aggravated when practiced in a Land, high in profession of
the benign doctrines of our blessed Lord, who taught his followers to do unto others as they
would they should do unto them!
Your petitioners desire not to enlarge, tho volumes might be filled with the sufferings of this
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grossly abused class of the human Species, (700,000 of whom it is said are now in unconditional
bondage in these States,) but, conscious of the rectitude of our motives in a concern so nearly
affecting us, and so essentially interesting to real welfare o this Country, we cannot but address
you as Guardians of our Civil Rights, and Patrons of Equal and National Liberty, hoping you will
view the subject in an impartial, unprejudiced light. We do not ask for the immediate
emancipation of all, knowing that the degraded State of many and their want of education, would
greatly disqualify for such a change; yet humbly desire you may exert every means in your
power to undo the heavy burdens, and prepare the way for the oppressed to go free, that every
yoke may be broken.
The Law not long since enacted by Congress called the Fugitive Bill, is, in its execution found to
be attended with circumstances peculiarly hard and distressing, for many of our afflicted
Brethren in order to avoid the barbarities wantonly exercised upon them, or thro fear of being
carried off by those Men-stealers, have been forced to seek refuge by flight; they are then hunted
by armed Men, and under colour of this law, cruelly treated, shot, or brought back in chains to
those who have no just claim upon them.
hi the Constitution, and the Fugitive bill, no mention is made of Black people or Slaves therefore
if the Bill of Rights, or the declaration of Congress are of any validity, we beseech that as we are
men we may be admitted to partake of the Liberties and unalienable Rights therein held forth
firmly believing that the extending of Justice and equity to all Classes, would be a means of
drawing down the blessings of Heaven upon this Land, for the Peace and Prosperity of which,
and the real happiness of every member o f the Community, we fervently pray.
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Petition of Absalom Jones and others, December 30, 1799 4~HR6A-F4.2. Jan. 2, 1800),
Records of the U. S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233, National Archives,
Washington, DC. Reprinted in Raymond W. Smock, ed Landmark Documents on the U. S.
Congress, CQ Press, 1999.
Background
Petition of Absalom Jones and Ohers, 1799
Many Americans took seriously the provision of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution
which provides that the people have a right to “petition the Government for a redress of
grievances.” In the early decades of the new American government thousands of petitions arrived
in Congress from citizens in all parts of the country.
The Petition of Absalom Jones and Others, December 30, 1799, is one of the earliest surviving
petitions sent to Congress by free blacks living in Philadelphia. Complaining that the Fugitive
Slave Act was unfair to both slaves and free blacks because “People of Colour” could be the
arbitrary victims of agents of slave holders who kidnapped free blacks and slaves alike under
protection of the Fugitive Slave Act.
The petition is particularly important because of the arguments it employed. It drew on the
meaning of the Declaration of lndependence, the language of the Preamble of the Constitution,
and the Bill of Rights. If slave traders and their agents could hunt men down and return them to
slavery, or enslave free blacks, then the blessings of liberty were denied. The petitioners claim a
“natural right to Liberty”, an idea derived from the Declaration of lndependence. They called on
Congress to be the “Guardians of our Civil Rights.” The petitioners also raised the important
point that blacks should be considered citizens and be protected by the law. These ideas, derived
from the basic documents of the founding of this nation, would continue to be used throughout
the 19th and 20th centuries as hallmarks of the struggle to end slavery and establish citizenship for
African Americans.
Who Was Absalom Jones?
Seventy free blacks from the Philadelphia area signed this petition, led by Absalom Jones (17461 818). Jones was the first African American priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was
born a slave in Delaware, and lived and worked in Philadelphia, where he was able to buy his
freedom in 1784. He, along with Richard Allen, another signer of this petition, were prominent
religious leaders among Philadelphia’s African American population and leaders of the
movement to abolish slavery.
Absalom Jones, (1746-1818) born in slavery in Delaware, was sold at the age of 16 to a
Philadelphia shop keeper. He attended a night school run by Quakers. At the age of2O he
married a slave and purchased her freedom with his own earnings. In 1784, when he was 38
years old, he was able to purchase his own freedom. He was active as a lay reader at
Philadelphia’s St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, until the numbers of blacks that he
helped bring into the church alarmed the white vestry, who decided to segregate the black
members into a second-story gallery. The black members walked out.
Jones founded the Free African Society with his friend Richard Allen, in 1787, the same year the
Constitution was drafted. The society members paid dues to aid the needy. The group built its
own church, The African Church, which was completed in 1794. The church was admitted to the
Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, as the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. Jones was
ordained a priest in 1802. Richard Allen was the founder of African Methodist Episcopal Church
in 1816.