On 18 June 1810, the Richmond City Council passed an ordinance that "no negro or mulatto" shall be permitted to use any "Gig chair or other carriage" in the city "except in the Capacity of maid or Servant to some Lady or Gentleman, hiring and riding therein." Christopher MacPherson, a mulatto free person of color who served as clerk during the American Revolution, asks for an exemption from the ordinance. He explains that, as an accountant and bookkeeper, he travels to various parts of the city; moreover, he and his wife are "both advanced in life and occasionally subject to disease -- it has happened and may again happen, that the occasional use of a carriage when they are unable to walk, may be necessary not only for their comfort but their health." The petitioner “submits without a murmur to those Laws of the Commonwealth, which impose disabilities imposed on that class of people to which he belongs and he is not disposed to deny, that there may be persons with respect to whom, the ordinance aforesaid might properly apply, but he humbly conceives that the said ordinance is unjust as it respects himself and family and that it deprives him of rights to which he is intitled under the laws and Constitution of this Commonwealth." He therefore prays that his case be taken into consideration and that “your Honorable Body will be pleased to enact such regulations as will prevent those rights from being infringed.”
Result: Rejected.
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
