{"petition":[{"petition_analysis_number":"11586001","petition_url":"https:\/\/dlas.uncg.edu\/petitions\/petition\/11586001","state":"Texas","county":"Gonzales","location_type":"County","file_day":16,"file_month":1,"file_year":1860,"filing_court":"Petition","enslaved_count":3,"fpoc_count":0,"total_people_count":4,"repository":"Texas State Library-Archives Division, Austin, Texas","abstract":"Nineteen-year-old John Blackwell petitions the legislature for the authority to control his own affairs.  Blackwell, a farmer, \"feels and believes that he is competant to attend to his own business, and to exercise all the rights, privilleges, and functions of a free man.\"  He further explains that \"he is the legal owner of property that is suffering and accumulating him nothing by reason of the opportunities being with-holden from him, of availing himself of higher wages a healthful location -- prudent care of his slaves and a higher rate of interest on money.\"  He states that \"some of his Slaves being old, and many of them little children that require the fostering hand of a good Master instead of the abuse and neglect to which a hired condition subjects them.\"  Blackwell therefore prays that \"your Honorable Body will enfranchise him, and confer on him the powers and privileges of a free man, to possess himself of the control of his estate.\"","subjects":[{"subject":"Seniors (enslaved)"},{"subject":"Westward migration"},{"subject":"Skills (enslaved)"},{"subject":"Crops (Cotton)"},{"subject":"Diseases (physical)"},{"subject":"Enslaver (minors)"}]}]}