To our Lords: the Counsellors of the Superior Council of Cap,
The free mulattoes and negres of this colony, very obedient and very faithful subjects of his majesty the King of France, humbly beseech
That it please you, our lords, to be informed by them in your office of the excessive hardships and the terrible distress that they have suffered on account of the loyalty they have always had and will ever have for his Majesty, however that be expressed.
The utmost rigor, exactitude, bravery, enthusiasm and courage that they have always shown and made known to you and before the eyes of your lordships for the safety of His Majesty's royal scepter had always given them hope and had even convinced them during the unhappy times of these late wars that peace would end their misery, but on the contrary [this was] only a vain hope, [and] our misfortune, for this is the reason for our chains.
We were to be forced to enlist in a newly established Legion, and subjected to a perpetual slavery to which we and our descendants would be reduced, without possessions or even claims to property and this is the means to besmirch [ternir] our posterity and yet, however, we had seen that his benevolent Majesty, whose august person your lordships represent, had granted us liberty in the full force of time and expressed in Article 59 of the Black Code and Civil Code of 1685 which, as you know our lordships, is written thusly.
We grant to manumitted slaves the same rights, privileges and liberties enjoyed by persons born free; desiring that they merit this acquired liberty and that it produce in them, both for their persons and for their property, the same effects that the good fortune of natural liberty causes in our other subjects. Our lords to try to force us to enlist and to have us thrown into irons to constrain us to enlist is to take that liberty from us; we have always served His Majesty faithfully without pressure, we were yet the first to arrive and the last to return from those places threatened by some enemy attack and moreover we went promptly, still without pressure, every holiday and Sunday to practice with canon and Tuesdays and Thursdays with field pieces and other mandatory work and details, like loading and unloading munitions for the artillery, carting the gun carriages of cannons that had to be moved, constant sentinel duty for my lords the Governor and Intendant, mandatory work in the field, and musket drills and everything [was done] with affection, courage and enthusiasm, in all nothing could shake or diminish our loyalty, to pay punctually all the tariffs and taxes and contributions due to His Majesty and all that earned them nothing.
It seems instead that this was a crime, that this has brought upon us the harsh treatment that we are suffering, some others of us have been taken to the Turk Islands to work there, today we are brought to a prison cell, fettered like criminals transfered from one prison to another and from our birthplaces to sites unknown to us to kill us in misery, in irons, crushed by blows from soldiers' musket butts, [threatened] with transportation, with being sold back into slavery for the profit of the King, and with the confiscation of our property and in this despair we are not even protected from the insults of our inferiors, that it please you, Our Lords, to investigate the distress heaped upon your poor citizens, and the void that this causes for this colony whose fathers you are, for, seeing ourselves so oppressed, we no longer believe we could be moved to fight for that fatherland [patrie] no longer wanted -- that be ours[;] we can draw only very grievous consequences from this [situation] for ourselves and our descendants, who as children born from us will have only the status of slaves, since we recognize that we are mere unfortunates, oppressed, not resisting with the courage that we have always shown in defending a fatherland that is no longer to be ours, since we are effectively forbidden property we will have none and henceforth we will be unable to acquire any and to use it; we see our wives and our children are little more than a band of wretches and we hope for their obliteration, we beg our lords to see with the eyes of your Holy Justice, that we are your citizens and your children, since you are the fathers of the whole colony and that we are subjects very attached to this fatherland [patrie] from which we are to be separated, and that we are useful to it, and very fond though indeed wretched, and that we have no other support than that of your justice to which we run as if to the sole fount of mercy, which could put an end to our misery, we ask you, Our Lords, in the name of God, and of our King and of your holy justice to cast off our chains and end our misfortunes which we hope will move and horrify your justice our lords, and that you will be pleased to order that no more such violence be done to us [who do] not reject that duty that all militias will be established to do, and the same duty as them; in consideration of this, our lords, may it please you to order the end of these pains and to deliver from their irons [men who] will never cease all their lives to offer their prayers to heaven for the safety and prosperity of our liberators and benefactors.
Signed, Lambert, M. Marseille, Vincent, Carre in the prisons of Cap, J.b. LeChatz, Pierre Imbers, Claude lmbert, Luis Lavalee, Lareene, J.B. Mila, E. Chauileau, Labonne faim, Le Maux, Sombre, Lavignac, Tolete Senipee, Dutil, Froget, Holie, Baussier, E. Meigner, P. Millot, J. Foreau, Pl Grandan, Lacomble, J. Viar, Delbieq, Pouget, Bauny, Jacques leRoy, Francois Piraumeau, Le Chevreuil, Alexis Pironneau