(Grant, Ulysses S). Townsend, ED E DBiblio.com
JOINT RESOLUTION TO AID IN RELIEVING FROM PEONAGE WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF THE NAVAJO INDIANS. General Orders No. 69. Headquarters of the Army. Adjutant General's Office. Washington August 14 1868. Public Resolution - No. 65.
1868rif. 95962Washington D.C. August 14 1868. 1868. Very good. - A 7-1/4 inches high by 4-5/8 inches wide broadsheet General Order issued as a "resolution of Congress" authorizing Lieutenant General W.T. Sherman "to use the most efficient means his judgment will approve to reclaim from peonage the women and children of the Navajo Indians now held in slavery in the territory adjacent to their homes and the reservation on which the Navajo Indians have been confined." The resolution adapted by Congress on July 27 1868 was distributed as a general order by "Command of General Grant" and signed in print by E.D. Townsend as Assistant Adjutant General. Removed from a bound collection in the distant past the broadsheet is lightly chipped with stab marks along the left edge. Very good. Throughout the American Southwest and in this case New Mexico Spanish settlers and their ancestors pursued a flourishing slave trade from the 16th though the 19th centuries. Captive Native Americans who became known as "Genizaros" were sold as slaves to Hispanic families. This practice went on even after the United States came to govern New Mexico. Having abolished slavery through the 13th Amendment in 1865 Congress then passed the "Peonage Act" in 1867 when it became known that New Mexicans still owned hundreds maybe thousands of these "Genizaros" consisting mostly of Navajo women and children. RARE. Washington, D.C., August 14, 1868. unknown
