DECREE of the Conseil d’Etat, providing that in the absence of white people the enslaved shall be received as witnesses, except against their enslavers

THE KING having had laid before him in his Conseil article 30 of the Ordinance of the month of March 1685, concerning the enslaved of the French Islands of America, in which it is said, among other things, that the said enslaved may not be witnesses, in civil as well as criminal matters, and that if they are heard in testimony, their deposition shall serve only as a memorandum to help the Juges obtain light from other sources, without any presumption or supporting item of proof being drawn from it; the Decree of the Conseil d’Etat of 13 October 1686, by which the late King, on the representations made to him by the Conseil Supérieur of Martinique, and for the reasons contained in it, ordered that, without regard to the said article, the enslaved should be received as witnesses in the absence of white people, except against their enslavers, as had been practiced before the said Ordinance of the month of March 1685, together with article 24 of the Edict of the month of March 1724, containing the Regulation for the enslaved of Louisiana, by which article His Majesty ordered that the…