Document 16 - Petition by Free Negroes for Equality Under the Law (1791)

When the Framers agreed to the Three-Fifths Compromise at the Philadelphia Convention in 1789, they were, in effect, placing the issue of slavery on the shelf. The Compromise was made to prevent the Southern States, with their high populations of slaves, from gaining more representation in Congress than the Northern States. The Compromise provided that all “free persons” would be counted in the populations for each State, and that each enslaved person would be counted as only three-fifths of a person. It is against this backdrop of discrimination against people of African origin that the following petition was written.

 

To the... members of the Senate of the state of South Carolina, The memorial... on behalf of themselves and others, free men of color, humbly shows: That in the enumeration of free citizens by the Constitution of the United States for the purpose of representation of the Southern states in Congress your memorialists have been considered under that description as part of the citizens of this state. Although by the fourteenth and twenty-ninth clauses in an Act of Assembly made in the year 1740... commonly called the Negro Act, now in force, your memorialists are deprived of the rights and privileges of citizens by not having it in their power to give testimony on oath in prosecutions on behalf of the state; from which cause many culprits have escaped the punishment due to their atrocious crimes, nor can they give their testimony in recovering debts due to them, or in establishing agreements made by them... except in cases where persons of color are concerned, whereby they are subject to great losses and repeated injuries without any means of redress. That by the said clauses in the said Act, they are debarred of the rights of free citizens by being

subject to a trial without the benefit of a jury and subject to prosecution by testimony of slaves without oath by which they are placed on the same footing. Your memorialists show that they have at all times since the independence of the United States contributed and do now contribute to the support of the government by cheerfully paying their taxes proportionable to their property with others who have been during such period.... That as your memorialists have been and are considered as free citizens of this state, they hope to be treated as such.... Your memorialists do not presume to hope that they shall be put on an equal footing with the free white citizens of the state in general. They only humbly solicit such indulgence as the wisdom and humanity of this honorable House shall dictate in their favor by repealing the clauses in the Act beforementioned, and substituting such a clause as will effectually redress the grievances which your memorialists humbly submit in this their memorial, but under such restrictions as to your honorable House shall seem proper....

Questions for Discussion

1. What rights, according to the petition, does the Negro Act of 1740 deny free persons of color?
2. What reasons do the writers give for justifying their request?
3. What do the petitioners ask of the South Carolina legislature?