Isaac Peirce to Thomas Rotch, Philadelphia, 8 mo 20th 1816

Farmer and horticulturalist Isaac Peirce queries Thomas Rotch about the possibilities of finding waged-labor and accommodations for the settlement of freed Virginia blacks in Ohio territory. Peirce held fourteen slaves on his plantation of several thousand acres in 1816 and eighteen slaves in 1850. The tone of this letter suggests that while he may have disagreed with the ideology of slaveholding, Peirce and his family continued to hold slaves until they were freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1862.(8" x 9.75)(20cm x 24.5) In a reply to Isaac Peirce on September 12, 1816, Rotch wrote that an Ohio law refusing residency to freed persons was still on the books and as a consequence, he unfortunately could not assist with their relocation. (see Thomas Rotch Letterbook H 21, pp 60-61