Mississippi was the first to adopt "black laws" obnoxious to the North. Her vagrant act was passed November 24, 1865. This provided that freedmen found with no lawful employment or business, or unlawfully assembling together, should be deemed vagrants, and be fined and imprisoned at the discretion of the court. A poll tax for a freedmen's pauper fund was to be levied on all freedmen, and should any fail or refuse to pay, he was to be hired out by the sheriff to any one who would pay the tax and costs, preference being given to his former master. Two days later a civil rights act was passed. This allowed freedmen to sue and be sued, implead and be impleaded, and to own personal property, but added the important proviso that the section should not be construed "to allow any freedman, free negro or mulatto to rent or lease any lands or tenements, except in incorporated towns or cities," where they should be controlled by the corporate authorities. Intermarriage of a white with any freedman, free negro or mulatto, should be punished by imprisonment in the state penitentiary for life. A laborer quitting before expiration of term of service without good cause, forfeited to his employer all wages for that year up to the time of quitting. Any one was authorized to arrest and return a deserting freedman, receiving therefor five dollars reward and mileage, all costs to be paid from the wages of the deserter. Any one persuading or attempting to persuade any freedman to desert his employer before his term of service expired, was guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to a fine of not less than twenty-five and not more than two hundred dollars, and if the offender attempted to persuade the freedman to desert, with a view of employing him without the limits of the State, the fine was to be not less than fifty nor more than five hundred dollars. While it was made lawful for a freedman to charge a white man with a criminal offence against his person or property, and to make all needful affidavits, a supplementary act passed December 2 provided that where sufficient proof was made before a court or jury that the arrest and trial had been falsely or maliciously caused, the freedman should be fined, and charged with all costs, and on failure to pay should be hired out at public outcry for the shortest time necessary to discharge the debt. An act passed November 29, among other restrictions, forbade freedmen to carry any fire arms, ammunition, dirk or bowie knife, under penalty, and declared that a freedman exercising the functions of a minister of the gospel, without a license from some regularly organized church, should be guilty of a misdemeanor, and become liable to an imprisonment not exceeding thirty days and to a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars.