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held by trustees only to avoid the Slave Code and by so doing save them much trouble, expense & vexation.
    
Therefore the said Churches through, their respective committees, the names of whom are here-unto attached, do petition and pray this Congress, to enact some law that will protect them in their rights as afore said.     And this they do the more confidently because they believe it to be one of their right incidental to their freedom; that the same power that gave to them their freedom, could & should restore to them their property rights, which were withheld from them by precisely this same wrong, the same power, the same law —  
    
Hoping for the relief asked, the undersigned committees sign their names in behalf of some eighteen hundred members belonging to the afore said Churches.

The names of the individuals hereunto signed are known to me to be the persons they represent themselves.

Geo F Harrington