The Mississippi acts were all passed in November. They were the acts which were before the view of Congress and the country in the beginning of December, 1865, and, with the exception of the South Carolina Preliminary Act just commented on, the only ones. They require, therefore, a somewhat fuller treatment. They consist of "An Act to regulate the relation of master and apprentice relative to Freedmen, Free Negroes, and Mulattoes, passed November 22, 1865"; the "Vagrant Act of November 24, 1865"; an "Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen and for other purposes," passed November 25, 1865; a supplementary Act to this, passed November 29, 1865; and another supplementary Act, passed December 2, 1865. The first Act provided that freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes under the age of eighteen years, being orphans, or the children of parents who could not, or would not, support them, should be apprenticed by the clerk of the Probate court in the county where found to competent and suitable persons, and on such terms as the court should direct; under the restrictions, that the former owner of the minor should be selected by the court as the master or mistress if, in the judgment of the court, he or she were competent and suitable; that the terms fixed by the court should have the interest of the minor particularly in view; and that the apprentice should be bound by indenture, to run, in the case of males, until the completion of the twenty-first year, {48} and, in the case of females, until the completion of the eighteenth year. This Act further provided that in the management and control of apprentices, the master or mistress should "have power to inflict such moderate corporal chastisement as a father or guardian is allowed to inflict on his or her child or ward at common law," but that in no case should "cruel or inhuman punishment be inflicted." It furthermore provided, that in case of desertion by the apprentice, he might be apprehended and brought before a justice of the peace, who might remand him to his master or mistress, and might, on the refusal of the apprentice to return, commit him to jail, on failure to give bond, until the next term of the County court, which court should inquire into the matter, and determine whether the apprentice had left the service to which he was bound without good cause or not, and should, in the one case, compel the return to service by ordering the infliction of the necessary penalties, and in the other, should order the discharge of the apprentice, and enter "judgment against the master or mistress for not more than one hundred dollars, for the use and benefit of the apprentice."