Fifty-eight Onslow County residents represent "that some legislation is absolutely necessary to relieve the people of the State from the evils arising from numbers of free negroes in our midst." The petitioners decry that "the free negro is an indolent lazy & thievish drunken individual, working only when he cannot steal, or induce the slave to steal for him." They further assert that "the slave is induced to enter his owners barn and the free negro is the recipient of the stolen goods; paying for them in whiskey." This results, they declare, in the slave imbibing "untill he become intoxicated, when he is ready for a general fight, or any species of rascality that may present itself." The petitioners argue that "free negroes are a growing evil, and deserve as we have no doubt, it will receive, the attention of the present General Assembly."
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Repository: North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
