Very rare address by John Rutherfoord in the House of Virginia on the question of banning "free negroes" from the State.
"It will hardly be denied by any one that this population [free negroes] is an evil in the state. But the full magnitude of the evil is not generally understood. . . . The free negroes have been generally found so mischievous a class everywhere that even nonslaveholding laws have passed laws to exclude them . . . as a class, they are idle, ignorant, degraded, and immoral; they fill up our courts with culprits and our penitentiaries with convicts, consuming more than they produce and diminishing rather than adding to the wealth of the state."
Rutherfoord, John C. Speech of John C. Rutherfoord, of Goochland, in the House of Delegates of Virginia, on the Removal from the Commonwealth of the Free Colored Population. Delivered February 18, 1853. Richmond. Printed by Ritchies & Dunnavant. 1853. 20pp.
A good copy, bound in wraps, disbound, with pages that are a bit handled, and have moderate foxing.
