Eighty-six "mechanics and undertakers in the Town of Columbia" seek legislation prohibiting slave owners and overseers from allowing skilled slaves to hire their own time. Self-hired slaves not only became contractors, or "undertakers" of jobs themselves, the petitioners complain, but they take "apprentices in the various mechanical arts exercised on and practiced in the said Towns whereby your Petitioners are often deprived of Jobs & employment in their respective trades." The petitioners seek a law with "certain and heavy penalties" to constrain owners or managers from permitting slaves to hire their own time. They also seek to penalize those who hire such slaves and to halt the practice of slaves hiring apprentices.
Result: Rejected.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
