Fourteen free people of color ask the General Assembly to petition Congress for land in the "western Territory" for the establishment of a colony for free blacks. Considering "themselves Americans-- knowing no other clime nor soil" makes it difficult for them to seek a separation, but "your petitioners are well aware of the importance of this petition." They point out that many of them "are the off springs of those who yielded their all in the Revolutionary struggle but the blessings of which from political policy are withheld from them." They therefore are compelled "in the spirit of peace to ask for a separation in the name and meaning of a Colony."
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
