The 1806 Black Code: a certificate to prove you are free (Territory of Orleans, June 7, 1806)

SUMMARYThe 1806 Black Code: a certificate to prove you are free (Territory of Orleans, June 7, 1806) [Connections: Louisiana (deep), Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDThe 1806 "Act prescribing the rules and conduct to be observed with respect to negroes and other slaves of this territory" (approved June 7, 1806) says in Section 21 that "free coloured persons, who carry arms, are expressly directed to carry with them a certificate" from a justice of the peace, or face the Section 19 penalty for slaves with weapons (seizure). Section 19 begins: "No slave shall, by day or by night, carry any visible or hidden arms." 64 Parishes (Elizabeth Clark Neidenbach) says the 1806 and 1808 laws were "the first of numerous legal restrictions enacted against free people of color under American rule." It says they required official documents to describe people as "free man/woman of color," and that free people of color could have "mixed racial ancestry—African, European, and/or Native American."

PATTERNThe American territorial government made the color label mandatory on official papers. It treated a person "of color" without papers as a slave. Native ancestry was folded into "free person of color."

LENS (WW9)The law made you write "of color" on every paper. Native ancestry went in under that label

OPENThe 1806 act's other sections (the "presume to conceive themselves equal" clause is widely quoted but was not verified on a fetched page); the 1808 Digest's wording

SOURCES1806 Act, Section 19–21 (Duke Center for Firearms Law, reprinting Levy's 1828 General Digest); Free People of Color from the Early American Period through the Civil War (64 Parishes).