In 1864, a petition for voting rights was presented in person to Lincoln and Congress by two Creoles of color. I would call this document, known as The 1000 Man Petition, America’s Second Declaration of Independence.
Currently, there is an all-out assault on diversity and inclusion of people of color in American history. The current administration is going to great lengths to hide and parse American history because some elements of history, such as the history of slavery and the genocide carried out against Native Americans, make some people uncomfortable. The complicated history of the U.S. needs to be told from diverse sources to get a more complete, inclusive picture of events: not hidden.
The story of the Black Founding Fathers and the second Declaration of Independence needs to be told.
In 1776, in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, at the Second Continental Congress, 56 delegates signed the Declaration of Independence. Nearly 100 years later, in 1864, in the Crescent City, New Orleans, the Black Founding Fathers met to create a second Declaration of Independence.
Only 56 elite white men signed the first Declaration of Independence in 1776. A much larger and more diverse group of men signed the Second Declaration of Independence in 1864: 20 white men and over 1000 free black men and Creoles of color.
At the Second Continental Congress, white patriots debated the merits of the first Declaration of Independence in English. But the second group’s meeting had to be conducted in English, French and Spanish to accommodate its diverse membership of blacks and whites in the Crescent City.
Both documents were signed during significant American wars. The first Declaration was signed during the American Revolution; the second was signed during the Civil War. The patriots who signed the first Declaration of Independence were landowners and politicians from the original thirteen colonies. Some had served in the Revolutionary War.
American roots and service to the U.S. run deep in both groups. The black patriots who signed the second Declaration of Independence were the elite of New Orleans. Many were landowners and businessmen, some had served in the War of 1812, and some were soldiers in the Civil War as well.
Forty percent of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders. Many of the signers of the second Declaration of Independence had ancestors who were slaves, and some, like my ancestors, were slaveholders too. The first Declaration of Independence made room for slavery to continue in the U.S. The Second Declaration called for equal protection under the law, and voting rights for all men.
James Madison had created the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, in 1788. Amendments 11 and 12 were ratified in 1798. The Second Declaration of Independence spurred the U.S. to create the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the first new amendments to the Constitution in nearly 70 years.
Some of the elite of New Orleans have a history in the Americas that mirrors the founding of Jamestown in 1607. For example, my relatives were some of the earliest founders of Quebec in 1608. A few of these New Orleans signers were descendants of soldiers who had fought with Galvez against the British in the Revolutionary War. Many of the signers from New Orleans were veterans of the War of 1812.
Some of the New Orleans elite were forced to serve for a short time in the Confederate Army before New Orleans was captured by the Union Army in 1862. Having been forced to serve in the Confederacy did not dampen their patriotism or their service to their country. Many of the Black Founding Fathers volunteered and served in the Union Army. This includes Arnold Bertonneau, who was a co-delegate chosen to deliver the Second Declaration of Independence to Lincoln and Congress in the spring of 1864.
While Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is considered one of the seminal speeches in American history, Bertonneau gave a speech in Boston in 1864 called “All Men Stand Equal Before the Law” that should be considered among the greatest American speeches. Present at Bertonneau’s speech were Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and Senator Charles Sumner.
The first Declaration of Independence renounced the shackles of a king’s domination over thirteen colonies. The second Declaration sought to cast off and end chattel slavery, to give rights of citizenship to newly freed slaves, to provide equal protection under the law, and to give voting rights to people of color. The debate on these issues took time, and the 13th,14th, and 15th Amendments were not all ratified by the states until 1870.
The Founding Fathers and their descendants would go on to become leaders of the nation and make Philadelphia the cradle of American democracy. The black Founding Fathers and their descendants would also become leaders in the segregated South, helping to form schools, universities, hospitals, and social and benevolent organizations. They would make New Orleans the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement. Just 30 years later, some of these Founding Fathers and their descendants would lead the fight for the end of segregation by shepherding the Plessy v Ferguson case to the Supreme Court.
While our nation’s first Declaration of Independence is on display in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., its Second Declaration of Independence, also known as The 1000 Man Petition, languishes in obscurity in the Library of Congress’s archive. It is time to display these two important documents side by side, as they comprise the first 15 Amendments of our Constitution. This is not a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion issue or a political issue. It is the history of America and her citizens, and it deserves to be told and displayed so Americans can make their own informed decisions about their history.
I present the true story of the Second Declaration of Independence in a screenplay called The Petition. I chronicle the story of New Orleans Creoles and my family history in my book Finding Octave: The Untold History of Two Creole Families and Slavery in Louisiana.
