One hundred twenty-nine Charleston citizens oppose a drafted bill "proposing to drive our free coloured people from the State under the heaviest penalties" and "your petitioners can find no reason for such severity." They avow that many free persons of color "are good citizens, [and have] patterns of industry, sobriety, and irreproachable conduct"; proof of this lies in "the fact that they hold property in the City of Charleston to the value of more than half a million of Dollars." The petitioners further argue that "their labour is indispensable to us in this neighbourhood" and that "they are the only workmen who will, or can, take employment in the Country during the summer," averring that "we cannot build or repair a house in that season without the aid of the coloured carpenter or bricklayer." They therefore "respectfully solicit the attention of your Honorable body to these objections to the proposed bill."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
