Two hundred eighty-nine citizens of Richland District seek laws preventing owners from allowing their slaves to hire their own time. They aver that "the demoralizing effects which such a practice is calculated to produce, is daily manifested by the dissolute lives of slaves who are thus licenced, and the baneful influence of their examples on the conduct of others." They further decry that skilled slaves "are enabled to labor at cheaper rates than the free white population of the same employments, and thus monopolize, in a great measure, the different mechanical trades; too frequently at the expense and sacrifice of the industrious white mechanic." The petitioners argue "that the vital interests of the whole community are materially interested and concerned, and eminently endangered by the pursuit and in the continuance of this alarming practice, as has been too palpably manifested by the recent and serious occurences in the city of Charleston, in which the principal plot and scheme originated and was matured by the machinations of this very class of our black population." They therefore pray that such laws be enacted "as will immediately and effectually suppress this dangerous and growing practice."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
