The Pennsylvania Gazette: Free blacks and mulattos flee (4 December 1793)
Annotation
Along with whites, free blacks and mulattos were also among those who fled the Haitian uprising. Mulattos could own slaves and plantations, and many of them did. Free blacks often manned the militias used to hunt down runaway slaves. Like the white settlers, both groups therefore had reason to flee. But, as this source relates, states such as South Carolina feared the consequences of their influence on the state’s own slave population.
Text
EDENTON, November 9th.
The Governor of South Carolina has issued a proclamation, requiring and ordering all free negroes and people of color, who have arrived there from St. Domingo, or who have arrived within twelve months from any other place, to depart the state in ten days from the date thereof, many characters amongst them being deemed dangerous to the welfare and peace of that state.
Credits
The Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), 4 December 1793; available on cd-rom (Accessible Archives: Wilmington, Del., distributed by Scholarly Resources, 1998).