Twenty-three citizens, many of whom are guardians of free people of color, complain about taxes imposed in 1822 to raise money to pay the municipal guard. They report that a new tax was levied on all property within the municipality; a ten-dollar-tax was imposed on all houses "inhabited by negroes or persons of color either as Tenants or owners"; and a ten-dollar-tax was required of every free man of color who worked as a mechanic. The petitioners argue that the tax system holds "certain landowners liable who had already paid their General Tax" and is thus inequitable. They therefore pray that "the Tax Collector ... refund to your memorialists the sum exacted from them in the year 1824 as the owners of houses within the said limits held subject to the tax."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
