Note 5 — Chapter XXV · Slavery and Peonage

The act providing for the organization of the Moro Province was passed on June 1, 1903, and hardly had the civil officers therein provided for been appointed when, on September 24, 1903, the legislative council passed an act entitled “An Act defining the crimes of slaveholding and slavehunting and prescribing the punishment therefor,”5 which was promptly approved by the Philippine Commission and thus came to have the force and effect of law. Under it active measures were adopted to break up slavery in the Moro Province. They have resulted very successfully, and persons who have captured others to be held or sold as slaves, as well as persons who have actually sold, bought or kept slaves, have been convicted and punished.