Eighty residents of Culpeper County "assert that the time is near at hand, without your interposition, when the most common and usefull trades will be professed and carried on by slaves ... the effect of which is to throw out of employ the white mechanick; and to degrade his profession, depressing at the same time his labour below its fair value, and to cause him to be impoverished, and finally drive him from his home and native state, to find in the west an assylum where he will be appreciated according to his honesty, industry and ingenuity." They therefore "pray your honorable body to pass a law for the encouragement and protection of the white mechanick, by prohibiting any slave, free negro or mulatto, being placed as an apprentice in any manner whatsoever to learn a trade or art, under severe and onerous penalties upon the owner of such slave, or servant, as well as upon the white person who may undertake to teach such slave, free negro, or mulatto his art or trade."
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
