1802 Quaker Petition Against Slavery

(Source: Miscellaneous Petitions to the Virginia Legislature, December 17, 1802. Archives of the Virginia State Library.)

To the speaker and House of Representatives of Virginia.

The memorial and petition of the religious Society of Friends.

Respectfully shew:

That your memorialists, estimating the importance of those concerns, which must necessarily engage the Legislature - feel no disposition to intrude upon your valuable time, or request your attention to subjects of a trivial nature but where grievances affecting any class of the community, arise from a partial construction of the laws, or exist because the laws have provided no remedy, we conceive it to be a duty, congenial with the spirit of legislation, and due to the House, faithfully to represent the same - and solicit such redress, as justice and equity require. Impressed with these sentiments- and feeling moreover the impulse of Religious duty, on behalf of the helpless, and unprotected - your memorialist beg leave to represent, certain cases of suffering, for which (in the opinion of some of the Courts) the laws have provided no effectual relief.

* Such we apprehend is the case of minor slaves, left free by will, but committed during their minority to the care of legatees - such minors notwithstanding their undoubted rights - and a clear conviction in the Courts of their claim to freedom - merely for the want of a legal prohibition - and on a ground of a temporary claim to their service - have been carried out of the State, and beyond the reach of testimony establishing their title - with the evident risk of being forever deprived of their freedom.

II Your memorialist beg leave further to represent that the practice of steeling, and selling free people of Color, continues to be carried on in some parts of the State; encouraged, we believe, by the little danger of conviction the law appearing to require evidence that free persons were stolen, or sold with a Knowledge of their being such. The difficulty, or rather their impossibility of adducing such evidence, we trust, will be sufficiently apparent, as well as the necessity of effectually restraining a practice which operates directly against the dignity of the Government - and contrary to the interest and spirit of the law, violates the first principles of justice with impunity. Your memorialist represent these subjects - with a full confidence that the justice, humanity, and sound policy of the Legislature will meet them with approbation. It cannot be supposed that the Representatives of a free, and enlightened people, can fail to appreciate the value of liberty, to whatever description of persons it may legally belong, or that they will not extend the barriers of the law around this inestimable privilege.

Interested as men and Christians, in the sufferings of our injured fellow creatures, and on behalf of numbers, who stand exposed to the same dangers - and may be involved in the same calamity - we therefore respectfully petition - That the law providing for the emancipation of slaves by will, and the law, respecting the stealing and selling free persons may be revised and amended - or that the legislature may make such provision for these cases as in their wisdom shall seem just and expedient.

Signed by order, and on behalf of the Representatives of the aforesaid Society

by James Ladd

Micajah Crew

Samuel Parsons

Jesse Copeland

Benjamin Bates Jr.

* See proviso to the law allowing emancipation. Abridgm't of the permanent public laws, page 281.

II "If any person shall hereafter be guilty of stealing or selling any free person for a slave, knowing the said person so sold to be free, and thereof shall be lawfully convicted , the person so convicted, shall suffer death without benefit of Clergy." Abridgment of the laws, page 280.

Friends Memorial. Mem. of L. to Riddick, Dupree, Dulaney, Allen, Sheffey, Shackelford, Aylett, Dunton, Jennings, Gee, Sebull, Blow, Josiah Riddick