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Amendment Proposal - To the Laws of South Carolina., dated November 30 1857, Franklin J Moses (1804-1877) proposes an amendment to the Law relating to the trading of the slaves. Printed form by Moses as Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. "That if any person who had been once convicted of dealing, trading or trafficing with a slave contrary to the acts of the General Assembly now of force, shall be a second time convicted of the like offence, such a person (not being a white female) shall for such second, or other subsequent offence in addition to the penalties now prescribed by law, be whipped not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, provided that the said punishment shall not extend to any conviction for an offence committed priot to the passing of this act." The amendment would successfully pass on December 21 1857. See page 23 of Ordinances of the City of Charleston from the 14th September, 1854, to the 1st December, 1859 . This amendment was not mentioned in Jews and the American Slave Trade by Saul Friedman or The Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight by Eli Faber. It was also unknown to Benjamin Ginsberg (I contacted him following the suggestion of Prof Jonathan Sarna who also never heard of it) who is a leading authority on the Moses Family author of Moses of South Carolina: A Jewish Scalawag During Radical Reconstruction (2010). Franklin J. Moses Sr. (born Israel Franklin Moses; August 13, 1804 - March 6, 1877) was an attorney, planter, politician and judge in South Carolina. He served as a state senator from 1841 to 1866, when he was elected to the circuit court. He was elected as Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court in 1868 during the Reconstruction era. In 1876 he was asked to rule on a challenge to election returns in the hotly disputed gubernatorial campaign, eventually won by Democrat Wade Hampton and ending Republican domination in the state. Franklin J. Moses was born in 1804 as Israel Franklin Moses into a Jewish family in Charleston to Major Myer Moses and Esther (Hetty) Phillips. His mother was one of 22 children of Jonas Phillips and his wife Rebecca Machado, was from a prominent Portuguese-Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His middle name was in honor of Benjamin Franklin, the statesman from Philadelphia.

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