The Georgia[119] Constitution of 1865 directed the General Assembly at its next session to pass a law to legalize the existing slave marriages and to provide for the contracting and solemnizing of future marriages and, in connection with this, to define and regulate the Negro’s right to devise and inherit property. The General Assembly[120] responded in 1866 by enacting a statute by which persons of color then living together as husband and wife were declared to be so. If the man had two reputed wives or the wife two reputed husbands, he or she must select one of the two as wife or husband, with her or his consent, and have the ceremony of marriage performed. If they continued to cohabit without making this choice, they were guilty of fornication and adultery. It was not enough to make the selection and live faithful to the one chosen; the marriage ceremony was a requisite.[121] Unless there were two reputed husbands or wives, the ceremony was not necessary.[122] By the same act[123] the children of slave marriages were legitimated, and Negro ministers were given a similar right to perform marriage ceremonies for Negroes as white ministers had for both races. Missouri,[124] in 1865, required all persons of color claiming to be married and wishing to continue in that relation to appear before some one authorized to perform the ceremony and be joined in marriage. The same year, South Carolina[125] passed a statute of ninety-nine sections relative to persons of color, eleven of which concerned their marital relations. This statute established the relation of husband and wife between persons of color, and declared that those then living as such were husband and wife. If a man had two or more reputed wives or a woman two or more reputed husbands, he or she must choose one of them by April 1, 1866, and be remarried. Children born before the enactment of this law were declared to be the legitimate offspring of their mother, and of their putative father also if they were acknowledged by him. Thereafter, Negroes must be married as white people were—by a clergyman, judge, magistrate, or other judicial officer. The husband who abandoned his wife or the wife who abandoned her husband, might be bound out from year to year until he or she was willing to resume conjugal relations. An abandoned wife was free to make a contract for service. South Carolina has been apparently the only State to provide for the children of white fathers and Negro mothers. A law[126] of 1872 declared that such children might inherit from their father if he did not marry another woman but continued to live with their mother. CERTIFICATES OF MARRIAGE