The registration policy was given further significance in 1842 by an act which required all registration certificates to be renewed every three years.[33] At the time of each renewal, an inquisition was made into the negro’s character and conduct. If the county court saw fit, it could refuse to renew the registration certificate. This compelled the free negro to leave the state within twenty days, except for sickness or unavoidable hindrance. If he refused to leave the state, within twenty days, he became subject to the penalties of the act of 1831.[34] This system of registration was not only a severe restriction upon the travel of the free negro, but it gave chances in its workings for considerable collusion of corrupt officials with agents of the slave traders. III. PROTECTION OF FREE NEGROES. It was a $500 fine to bring into the state a free negro convict and sell him as a slave. Such a person was also subject to an imprisonment for not exceeding six months.[35] Knowingly to steal and sell any free negro was a penitentiary offense and was punishable by not less than five nor more than fifteen years in the state prison.[36] The children of free negroes were not permitted to remain destitute and suffer. The county courts engaged their services to suitable persons in the best and wisest terms, if their parents did not support them.[37] IV. THE SUFFRAGE FOR FREE NEGROES. A. _The Suffrage for Free Negroes in North Carolina._ The historical background for negro suffrage in Tennessee is found in the laws and practices of colonial North Carolina. The charter that established the Assembly in North Carolina empowered the proprietors to govern the province “with the advice, assent and approbation of the Freemen of the said Province.”[38] The next paragraph of this charter refers to the “assemblies of free holders.”[39] There is no exclusion on the basis of color in either of these references. “In 1703, servants, negroes, aliens, Jews and common sailors voted for members of the General Assembly.” The act of 1715 made it lawful for “the inhabitants and free men in each precinct ... to choose two freeholders ... to sit and vote in the said Assembly.”[40] It is noticed here that the terms, inhabitants, free men, and freeholders, included free negroes. Hence, to exclude them, the act specifically stated that no negro, mulatto, or Indian could vote for members of the Assembly. This act remained the basis of suffrage to 1835. Efforts were made by the royal governors to restrict the suffrage to freeholders. They repeatedly received royal instructions to this effect, but the law of 1715 prevailed, and freemen continued to vote.[41]