The petitioners assert that the 1809 law requiring retailers to take an oath that they would neither buy nor sell liquor to slaves without written permission from the slaveholder "is unequal unnecessary and unjust." Some retailers, the petitioners note, fail to obtain a license, and some private citizens sell liquor to slaves. Moreover, not all merchants obey the law. Thus when slaveholders send their domestic servants to stores without permission slips some merchants refuse to sell the slaves "the smallest trifle" while others sell items to the slave "without the formality of any permission in writing." They urge the legislature to consider the "necessity of reform."
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Repository: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi
