II. THE SOUTHERN AND SOUTHWESTERN STATES[124] [124] In this section are considered the laws of the District of Columbia and Porto Rico; the four territories, Arizona, Indian Territory, New Mexico, and Oklahoma; and the fifteen states, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. _a_) _Legislative divorce._--In the South, as elsewhere[125] shown, divorces were at no time granted during the provincial era. Even the provisions of the English ecclesiastical law were not in force, because tribunals competent to administer them were not created. Separation by mutual consent, or some sort of separate maintenance, was the only kind of relief then obtainable. Indeed, after independence was declared, it was more than half a century in Virginia and Maryland, and many years in North Carolina, before the courts were granted even partial jurisdiction in divorce causes. [125] See chap. xv, sec. ii. The legislature, however, was not inactive. Conservative as southern sentiment is supposed to have been regarding dissolution of the marriage bond, it is precisely in the South that legislative divorce was tried on the widest scale and where it bore its most evil fruit. It seems probable that from the earliest times following the Revolution, in some of these states, marriages were dissolved by ordinary bills passed by the assemblies. Of these a few examples have been discovered, although they are all of relatively late origin. The earliest appear in the Maryland statutes. Thus, by the act of December 21, 1790, the marriage between John Sewall, of Talbot county, and Eve, his wife, was declared null and void, on the ground, set forth by John in his petition, that, having been convicted of bearing a "mulatto child," his wife with the child had been condemned to servitude and sold, according to the cruel statute of 1715 "in such case made and provided."[126] Another instance of absolute divorce occurred in 1805. It seems that on account of his misconduct Archibald Alexander and his wife Susanna had "mutually agreed to live separate and apart from each other, and that articles of separation were entered into between them for that purpose." While they so lived apart the "said Susanna" took "upon herself the charge of six children, two of which were the children of the said Alexander." But, continues the petition, "in the month of July last there was a well founded report" that Archibald was dead; and "under this belief" Susanna formed a second marriage with John Musket. Accordingly, on their prayer, the legislature declared the former contract "absolutely and to all purposes null and void," and Archibald and Susanna "divorced _a vinculo matrimonii_," but without affecting the rights or legitimacy of the children of the first marriage.[127]