Twenty-three planters of Christ Church Parish seek to repeal the 1821 law that imposed the death penalty on whites convicted of killing slaves. The petitioners argue "that inflicting the punishment of death on a white man for killing a slave, who is a property, instead of exacting a fine for the loss of that property, was placing the white inhabitants on a footing which would not be admitted by Juries of our countrymen, and hence that the penalty would never be inflicted in any case however enormous." They avow that the said law made slaves more aggressive and thus encouraged ideas of insubordination and emancipation. The planters further assert that the law hindered their ability to put down gangs of runaways, whereby "such negroes as have in Consequence of this Combination of fatal circumstances remained out for Years, at length cease to respect the whites" and become reckless and launch attacks against plantations, plundering stock and goods. In detailing circumstances where the deaths of runaway slave have "been brought on them by the aggravating circumstances attending their depredations," they relate how one slave family joined a group of runaways in the woods, and after the mother and father were killed, the children (one of whom had been born in the woods) surrendered. The planters seek redress from "so grievous a state of anarchy" and demand that runaway slaves be considered outlaws and "deprived of the benefit of the Laws and out of the protection of the State."
Result: Referred to judiciary committee.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
