Among the early laws is one exacting a penalty of $500 fine for selling a "free person of color."[26] A free person imported and sold as a slave under the law might recover double the price of his sale from the seller, who might be held until he should give bond.[27] This marks a high degree of feeling of justice toward the freeman, and yet it is worthy of notice that this was not always adequate to obtaining actual justice. Record is given of three young colored men, seamen and free, "carried to Mobile and New Orleans in the steamer _New Castle_ and taken ashore by the captain to the city prison on pretext of getting hemp for the vessel, but really taken by the captain to the city prison as his slaves and sold by the jailor to three persons who carried them into Tennessee."[28] It is further stated that these unfortunates remained in slavery. One, however, was freed by the diligent work of the Friends, who had agents in the South busy gathering information concerning slavery, and planning means of combating it. The free person of color was exempted from military duty and from the payment of a poll-tax. In accordance with an amendment to the Public Works act of 1804, he was expected to give service on public roads and highways just as other citizens.[29] It is doubtful whether any freeman of color voted under the constitution of 1796, but it seems to have been possible. The new constitution of 1834 restricted the right of voting to "free men who should be competent witnesses against a white man in a court of justice." In the courts free Negroes were legal witnesses in certain cases among their own people, but might themselves be testified against by slaves, even, if the defendants were only freedmen.[30] Otherwise slaves were not allowed to be witnesses against free men of color. Writs of error were granted to both freemen and slaves.