In 1828, Joseph Mickle purchased James Walker, a free person of color, at auction for a five-year term for $215.37, signing a note payable to the state of South Carolina; Walker was sold because he had failed to pay his "acreage taxes." In 1829, Walker escaped to North Carolina but was "apprehended and lodged in the Gaol of Fayetteville." Mickle sent an agent to identify and retrieve Walker, but the jailer refused to turn him over, contending Walker was "a free man, and would soon be declared so by a proper authority." Having "been deprived of the Services of the Said James Walker," the petitioner prays that he be exonerated "from paying the two hundred dollars for the Taxes of the said James Walker" and that the sheriff be ordered to deliver up the note.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
