The author of the Act, a cotton planter from Marlboro, W. D. Evans, then arose and also apologized for it, and a verbal pledge was given, that the Act should be repealed. At that time the Act was in its amended form, only operative for one-half of the year. But so far from being repealed, the only action concerning it, was the making of it operative for the whole year as originally drawn, license reduced. As dissatisfying as such a statement may be to those to whom the injustice of it, and the disregard of a promise given under such solemn conditions, is repugnant, it must be borne in mind, that similar legislation of the State of Georgia had been, in the mean time, reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States, and sustained upon the grounds _inter alia_, that— “If it can be said to affect the freedom of egress from the State or the freedom of the contract, it does only incidentally and remotely.”[245] The Supreme Court of the United States, therefore, shares with the Lower South the responsibility for this harsh and unwise restriction of the right of labor to its fullest wage, as well as the denial to a peculiarly ignorant and helpless mass of the population, of an assisted egress from localities where they are said to be such a menace from their extraordinary numbers, that a setting aside of all law and depriving of individuals of life without law by mobs is sometimes by some people justified. But, while arguing for labor its right to go where it wishes to win its highest wage, we need not shut our eyes to the rank selfishness of the industrial agencies, which sweep out of a community the bulk of the able-bodied males and leave only the dependent women and children as a burden on it. That, however, could and should be met by legislation preventative of the breaking up of families simply to meet the demands of industrial slavery. But the right of the laborer to all that his work can earn should be protected, nevertheless. As fruitful as the incidents of this extraordinary Convention were, in illustration of phases of the Negro question, the most remarkable of all, however, remains yet to be narrated. It has been previously stated, that in 1865, when the States of the then defunct Confederacy endeavored to rehabilitate themselves, as members of the Union, after Emancipation, but before Reconstruction, both South Carolina and Mississippi adopted codes, in which were the provisions that “every person who may have of Caucasian blood seven-eighths or more shall be deemed a white person,” thus separating such from “persons of color”, a denomination including all Negroes and mixed blood having less than seven-eighths of Caucasian blood, who were declared at the same time, “not entitled to social or political equality with white persons.”