Читать книгу Race Distinctions in American Law - Gilbert Thomas Stephenson - Страница 20

Table of Contents

After 1865 there was comparatively little legislation as to the movement of Negroes from one State to another. It would have been utterly impossible to control the migration of the 4,000,000 Negroes then in the United States. In States where the free Negroes were numbered by only hundreds or even thousands, the entrance or exit of one was a noticeable event. Where, however, Negroes were in the majority, a hundred might have come or gone at once without being noticed. The Constitution of Georgia^[74] of 1865 empowered the general assembly to make laws for the regulation or prohibition of the immigration of free persons of color into that State from other places; but the legislature seems not to have used this power.

Two years earlier, in 1863, the legislature of Kentucky^[75] had declared that it was unlawful for any Negro or mulatto claiming to be free under the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, or under any other proclamation by the Government of the United States, to migrate to or remain in the State. Any Negro violating this law was treated as a runaway slave.

A law of South Carolina,^[76] of 1865, provided that no person of color should migrate to or reside in the State unless, within twenty days after his arrival, he entered into a bond with two freeholders as sureties in a penalty of one thousand dollars, conditioned on his good behavior and for his support if he should become unable to support himself. If he should fail to execute the required bond, he had to leave the State within ten days, or be liable to corporal punishment. If, after being so punished, he should still remain in the State fifteen days longer, he was to be transported beyond the limits of the State for life “or kept at hard labor, with occasional solitary confinement, for a period not exceeding five years.” The same punishment of banishment for life, or confinement and hard labor for a term was prescribed for any person of color coming or being brought into South Carolina after having been convicted of an infamous crime in another State.

That the Southern States believed that the day of the Negro as a laborer was over was evidenced, not only by their efforts to keep Negroes out of the State, but also by the fact that so many of them, during the first years after the War, passed statutes encouraging and offering inducements to foreign immigrants. The movement to bring foreigners into the South is still going on, but it has never met with much success.

Although to-day many places, both in the North and in the South, do not permit Negroes to reside within their borders or even to stay over night, the above are apparently the last instances where attempts to limit the movement of Negroes^[77] have been made by State legislatures. Most of the States have concluded to allow Negroes to come and go at will, but to fix their status while in the State.