A general impression in the North is that the Southern courts are very severe with colored men; and (if he has not already been lynched) it is true that they are likely to pass heavy sentence on a Negro who has killed a white man, and juries are often merciless; but there are many cases where blacks are lightly treated on the express ground that they have had less opportunity to know what is right and wrong. In Brookhaven, Miss., a very rough region, in a year three white men have been heavily sentenced for killing Negroes; while many cases could be cited where a Negro was acquitted or let off with a light penalty for a like offense. When it comes to less serious crimes, the Negro enjoys a special protection whenever he can call in a respectable white man to vouch for him as in general straightforward; the Court is then likely to impose a light sentence. Even in serious cases a man is sometimes acquitted or lightly treated at the request of his master, so that he may return to work. That is what the planter meant who boasted: "I never sent a nigger to jail in my life; and I have taken more niggers out of jail than any planter in Alabama." That is, he never gave information against one of his own hands, but inflicted such small penalties as he saw fit; and he would pay the fine for his men who came before the courts, or even secure their pardon, so as to get them on his plantation. That principle sometimes goes terribly deep. In the case of a Negro who whipped his child to death, the natural inquiry was, "What did they do with him?" To which the nonchalant answer was, "Oh, nothing, he was a good cotton hand." The great majority of negro convicts are sentenced for petty crimes, stealing, vagrancy, and the like, and for rather short terms; but the name for this punishment, "the chain gang," points to a system practically unknown in the North. There are literal chain gangs, with real shackles and balls, working in the streets of cities, white and black together; and large bodies of convicts are worked in the open, stockaded, and perhaps literally chained at night. Right here comes in one of the worst features of the Southern convict system. The men on the chain gang are perhaps employed on city or county work, and if their terms expire too fast, the authorities will run out of labor; hence, the Negroes believe, perhaps rightly, that judges and juries are convinced of their guilt just in proportion to the falling off of the number of men in confinement; and that if necessary, innocent people will be arrested for that purpose. That is probably one reason why Negroes feel so little shame at having been in prison. "Did you know I was in the barracks last night?" is a remark that you may hear at any railroad station in Georgia.