The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
The effect of this insurrection and this debate extended far beyond
the borders of Virginia and the South. Governor McArthur of Ohio in a
message to his legislature called special attention to the outbreak
and the necessity for prohibitive legislation against the influx
within that commonwealth of the free people of color who naturally
sought an asylum in the free States. The effect in Southern States was
far more significant. Many of them already had sufficient regulations
to meet such emergencies as that of an insurrection but others found
it necessary to revise their black codes.
Maryland passed, at the session of its legislature in 1831-1832, a law
providing a board of managers to use a fund appropriated for the
purpose of removing the free people of color to Liberia in connection
with the State colonization society.[51] Another act forbade the
introduction of slaves either for sale or resident and the immigration
of free Negroes. It imposed many disabilities on the resident free
people of color so as to force them to emigrate.[52] Delaware, which
had by its constitution of 1831, restricted the right of franchise to
whites[53] enacted in 1832 an act preventing the use of firearms by
free Negroes and provided also for the enforcement of the law of 1811
against the immigration of free Negroes and mulattoes, prohibited
meetings of blacks after ten o'clock and forbade non-resident blacks
to preach.[54]
In 1831 Tennessee forbade free persons of color to immigrate into that
State under the penalty of fine for remaining and imprisonment in
default of payment. Persons emancipating slaves had to give bond for
their removal to some point outside of the State[55] and additional
penalties were provided for slaves found assembling or engaged in
conspiracy. Georgia enacted a measure to the effect that none might
give credit to free persons of color without order from their guardian
required by law and, if insolvent, they might be bound out. It further
provided that neither free Negroes nor slaves might preach or exhort
an assembly of more than seven unless licensed by justices on
certificate of three ordained ministers. They were also forbidden to
carry firearms.[56] North Carolina, in which Negroes voted until 1834,
enacted in 1831 a special law prohibiting free Negroes from preaching
and slaves from keeping house or going at large as free men. To
collect fines of free Negroes the law authorized that they might be
sold.[57] The new constitution of the State in 1835 restricted the
right of suffrage to white men. South Carolina passed in 1836 a law
prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read and write under penalties,
forbidding too the employment of a person of color as salesman in any
house, store or shop used for trading. Mississippi had already met
most of these requirements in the slave code in the year 1830.[58]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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