“After all, the greatest fault of the Southern lawmakers was not that their procedure was unwise _per se_, but that when legislating as a conquered people, they failed adequately to consider and be guided by the prejudices of their conquerors.”[195] If there is ground for condemnation in the above, the South must be condemned for thinking better of their conquerors than they deserved. The South Carolina Act, above alluded to, excepted from the provisions of what has been called the “Black Code”—“every person who may have of Caucasian blood, seven-eighths or more,” who it provided “shall be deemed a white person,”[196] declaring, however, that: “all other free Negroes, mulattoes and mestizos, all freed women and all descendants through either sex of any of these, except as above, shall be known as persons of color.” It declared that the statutes and regulations concerning slaves were inapplicable to persons of color and although such were not entitled to social or political equality with white persons, they were given the right to own and dispose of property, to make contracts, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to sue and be sued, and to receive protection under the law in their persons and property. While the Black Code did therefore regulate the relations and restrain persons of color, in Mr. Dunning’s and Mr. Burgess’s opinion, there was little in the South Carolina Act calculated to arouse any pronounced hostility in the North. In the opinion of the latter, indeed, it— “provided for substantial equality in civil rights between persons of color and white persons.”[197] Two provisions it did contain of great importance, which it must be borne in mind were framed by the representatives of 250,000 whites surrounded by 400,000 Negroes, ninety per cent of whom were densely ignorant. The first of these was aimed to prevent the burden of this helpless ignorance from increasing; the second to secure to this population a measure of protection, which those who had emancipated the slaves had not granted to the freedmen in their own section, by their own laws, for the greater part of the time of their living in Free States.— “XXII. No person of color shall migrate into and reside in this State, unless within twenty days after his arrival within the same he shall enter into bond with two freeholders as sureties to be approved by the Judge of the District Court or a Magistrate, in a penalty of one thousand dollars conditioned for his good behavior and for his support if he should become unable to support himself.”[198]