isa-normaladvance-1913-00004

Description:	THE NORMAL ADVANCE&n <01b gbbertementTN the fall of 1813, the people of the Indiana*■ Territory read from one of the early newspapers that circulated in the southern part ofthe State, the following notice:30 DOLLARS REWARD.Ranaway from the subscriber on the 15thof September last, a Negro Man, named Ben, heis between 27 and 30 years of age, tolerablydark, and rather under the common size, has adown look when spoken to, and limps a littleoccasioned by a sprein of one of his ancles hadon when he went off, a pair of coarse linen overalls, and a roundabout of the same kind. I expect he is lurking about in Jefferson conty(Ky.) or in the Indiana Territory. The abovereward of 30 dollars will be given to any person that wTill apprehend and deliver him to me,or commit him to jail in Louisville, if takenmore than 50 miles from Jeffersonville, (Ind.)and a reasonable reward if taken within thatdistance.SAML. GWATHMEY.Jeffersonville, October 2d, 1813.P. S.—Twenty Dollars will be given for suchinformation as will enable me to obtain him, ifgot more than 50 miles from Jeffersonville.S. G.1Samuel Gwathmey was the Register of theLand Office at Jeffersonville, Indiana. TheJeffersonville Land District comprised about allof southeastern Indiana, and by this office thesales of the public lands in the District wereconducted. The position was one of the mostresponsible positions to which the United StatesGovernment had the appointing power in Indiana, and Mr. Gwathmey was thus one of themost prominent and influential men in southeastern Indiana at that time.There was nothing extraordinary about thisadvertisement. The people of the State read itwith scarcely a comment, and with much lessinterest than they read the accounts of the military events along the northern frontier. It wasa very common thing to advertise for escapingnegroes, and just across the river Ohio therewas scarcely a day when there was not somemention or notice of escaping black men. Andnot yet had the Ohio set itself up as a barrieragainst the Southern influence. It is true thatthe Congress of the United States, after muchdifficulty in inducing its dilatory and indifferent members to convene, passed, a quarter of acentury before, on July 13, 1787, An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory ofthe United States Northwest of the RiverOhio, and it is also true that the sixth articleof this ordinance declared that: There shall beneither slavery nor involuntary servitude inthe said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall havebeen duly convicted: provided, always, thatany person escaping into the same, from whomlabor or service is lawfully claimed in any oneof the original States, such fugitives may belawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the personclaiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid. This Ordinance was the supreme law,or constitution, by which the territories northof the Ohio were governed, and applied to whatis now Indiana, from 1787 to 1816, when thepeople of the State adopted their own constitution for government.Yet this Ordinance did not prohibit slaverynor involuntary servitude. In 1800, therewere at Vincennes, the seat of justice for Knoxcounty, which was the only county in the Statethen organized, 28 negro slaves. By 1810,thenumber of slaves at Vincennes had increasedfrom 28 to 135. In Harrison county there were21 slaves in 1810, and in Clark county, thecounty in which Jeffersonville was situated,^Western Courier, Louisville, Ky., Nov. 30, 1813
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/34449
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

Further information on this record can be found at its source.