Fifty-four residents of Fairfield District ask that the guardianship law be revised to require white guardians to be responsible not only for free adults of color and but for children of color as well. They propose that, when free children of color reach age twelve, the guardian should "have full and ample power to appoint a guardian to such children"; under the authority of said guardian and with approval of a Justice of the Peace, the children should be bound out to a useful trade until they reach age twenty-one. The petitioners charge that it is problematic when "a free colored person may be raising a family; and notwithstanding he may be under the safety and direction of a guardianship, his family may be let run unbound and unguardianed among our slave population to their damage and of consequence to the serious injury of the master." The petitioners, "making this representation of what seems to our apprehensions a deficiency in the existing laws, and presuming to suggest a remedy, pray that the same may be taken into consideration."
Result: Referred to judiciary committee.
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
