CHAPTER IV THE “BLACK LAWS” OF 1865–68 One set of race distinctions deserves to be treated by itself. They have long since become obsolete and were, during their existence, in a sense, anomalous; yet they are, perhaps, the most illuminating from a historical point of view of all the race distinctions in the law. They were the result of the statutes that were enacted by the legislatures of the Southern States between 1865 and 1868 for the definition and establishment of the status of the Negro. The War closed in 1865; the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution was ratified July 28, 1868; and the Reconstruction régime in the South was not under way till 1868 or later. Therefore, during the interval between the close of the War and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment or the beginning of active Reconstruction, the Southern States were free to adopt such measures as they saw fit to establish the relation between the races. The legislatures faced a new problem, or rather an old problem increased many fold in perplexity. They had to establish the industrial, legal, and political status of 4,000,000 people who had recently been slaves and were now freemen. It must be remembered that when the Southern legislatures convened in 1865 their actions with regard to the Negro were not beset by the limitations subsequently fixed by the Federal Government. The first Civil Rights Bill, that of 1866, had not been passed. The Southern States were at liberty to enact such statutes as they thought proper and to draw upon their own experience and that of the free States with regard to free Negroes. “BLACK LAWS” OF FREE STATES These statutes of 1865–68 are here called the “Black Laws.” This term was first applied to the laws of the border and Northern States passed before and up to the Civil War to fix the position of free persons of color. It is well to make a cursory examination of these laws of the free States, because they are prototypes of many of the statutes enacted by the Southern States while unhampered by Federal legislation. All the States, North as well as South, had previously faced the problem of the free Negro and made laws concerning him. Naturally, therefore, the South, now that all its Negroes were declared free, turned for precedents to the other States which had already had experience with the free Negro. The following are some of the statutes that had been enacted with regard to free Negroes by States lying outside of what was later the Confederacy: Maryland,[56] in 1846, denied Negroes, slave or free, the right to testify in cases in which any white person was concerned, though it permitted the testimony of slaves against free Negroes. The Constitution[57] of 1851 forbade the legislature to pass any law abolishing the relation of master and servant.