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THE PROPOSED FREE NEGRO LAW.**
To the Editor of the Charleston Mercury:
Permit us to join with you in you “emphatic protest” against the Free Negro bill published in your paper Saturday*. We do sincerely hope that a measure so full of oppression and injustice will never be found on the Statue books of South Carolina. For ourselves, we can see neither the policy nor the necessity of such legislation, and think it well characterized by you as only “mischievous in its effects,” and exceedingly “ill-timed in its promulgation.” It is no doubt true that we have bad free negros amongst us, and so we have bad white men; but as we can keep the latter in check, so we can the former. But we have also a considerable number of colored persons in our community who are leading peaceable, honest, and industrious lives, and who have the confidence and esteem of our best citizens. Many of these have been born and grown up with us, and we are as well acquainted with their lives and characters as with those of any other class. By honest and patient industry they have accumulated more or less property, and some of them are in quite comfortable circumstances in this respect; consequently they have a stake in the welfare of the community, and everything to lose by whatever tends to disturb or overthrow it. We regard them, therefore, as a safe class of people, who will keep their eyes and ears open to give us warning of any danger, and we should be both sorry and ashamed to see any act of the Legislature passed to reduce them to slavery, or to drive them with ruinous haste from our borders. Our free negroes and our slaves are beginning to learn- if they have not already learned- how detrimental to their best interests, to their happiness and prosperity, has been every effort of their “Northern friends”, and they may well regard them as their greatest enemies. Every privilege of which they have been restricted, every restraint to which they have been subjected, is the consequence of their unwarrantable, fanatical, and impotent interference. Aristides.
*The Bill against the Free Negroes (Charelston Mercury, Saturday,November 24, 1860)
We publish to-day, for the information of our readers, a bill which is prepared for introduction at the coming session of the Legislature. In doing so, we desire at once to enter our emphatic protest. We regard it as a measure harsh in its policy, and wholly unrequired by the public exigencies, while it is mischievous in its effects, and remarkably ill-timed in its promulgation. The Legislature has something else to do beside the discussion of such topics as this, and we sincerely trust that, upon reflection, it will by tacit consent be consigned to the tomb of the Capulets. The measure must fall still-born upon that body.
**(Charelston Mercury, Saturday,November 24, 1860)”...Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, now met and sitting in General Assembly, and by the authority of the same, That from and after the first day of January, 1862, all free persons of color within the limits of South Carolina, be and they are hereby declared to be slaves to all intents and purposes...”
According to the State records this bill was ordered to “lie on the table” and no further consideration given to it, Tuesday November 5, 1861.
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David Upton