Minutes of the New-York Manumission Society, [26 January 1788]
Minutes of the New-York Manumission Society
[New York, 26 January 1788]
At a Special Meeting of the Society for promoting the manumission of Slaves and protecting such of them as have been or may be Liberated held at the Coffee House on the 26 Day of January 1788.
Present
John Jay Esqr. President & Nine other Mem^bers^.
The Society being informed by the Standing Committee that this Meeting was called for the purpose of Considering the propriety of Petitioning the Legislature on the Subject of preventing the Exportation of Slaves from this State. The Society proceeded to Consider the same and ^a^ motion was made and Seconded that a Petition similar to the former be made out and that it be presented to the Legislature as soon as possible.1
Resolved—that a Committee of twelve be appointed to procure Subscribers to the said Petition. And that Robert Troup John Lawrence Mercht. John Murray Junr. Melancton Smith Doctr. Rogers. Benjamin Moore, John Mason Ezekiel Robins, William Linn Doctr Cogswell Effingham Embree & Abijah Hammond be the said Committee. On Motion made and Seconded That a Committee be appointed to consider of Ways and means to prevent the irregular Behaviour of Free negroes and that they Report thereon at the Next meeting of the Society Resolved that Ebenezer Hazard John Lawrence Mercht. & William Cochran be a Committee for that purpose
A motion was made and Seconded that a Committee of three be appointed to enquire into and Collect Proofs respecting the Out-rages Committed by some Persons in taking up and Carrying away the Dead Bodies of negroes Buried in this City: and that the said Committee in Case they find the same advisable apply to the Magistrates of the City to prevent any further abuse of the Kind—2
Resolved that Robert Troup, John Murray Junr. and Nathaniel Lawrence Compose the said Committee
C, NHi: NYMS (EJ: 630). Dft, rough minutes, NHi: NYMS.
1. See New-York Manumission Society: Draft Petition to the New York State Legislature, [after 8 Feb. 1786], above.
2. The graves of black New Yorkers, free and enslaved, whether in the Negro Burial Ground or in the private cemetery on Gold Street that catered to black Episcopalians, were particularly vulnerable to grave robbers. On 4 Feb. 1788, a petition by 1,000 free blacks and 2,000 slaves was presented to the Common Council to protest the desecrations. While the petition survives in the New York City Municipal Archives, no mention of it is made in the nor does any record of action on this issue by the NYMS appear there. Robert J. Swan, “Prelude and Aftermath of the Doctor’s Riot of 1788: A Religious Interpretation of White and Black Reaction to Grave Robbing,” New York History 81 (2000): 437–40. See also SLJ to Susannah French Livingston, [17 Apr. 1788], below, on the Doctors’ Riot.