Читать книгу Race Distinctions in American Law - Gilbert Thomas Stephenson - Страница 26

Table of Contents

Another perplexing problem that faced the Southern legislatures was how to meet the needs of the paupers, white and Negro. Much of the property of the white people had been swept away entirely or had greatly deteriorated in value as a result of the War. Few of the Negroes, to be sure, had property to lose, but what was worse, they had lost their right to look to the white people for sustenance. Many of them were unable to support themselves, and the white people could not help them. The legislatures, therefore, adopted the plan of levying a tax upon each race for the support of its own indigents. South Carolina and Mississippi again took the lead.

In South Carolina,^[115] when a person of color was unable to earn his support and was likely to become a public charge, the father and grandfathers, mother and grandmothers, child and grandchildren, brother and sister of such a person should each according to ability contribute for the support of his or her relative. In each judicial district there was a “Board of Relief of Indigent Persons of Color,” consisting of from four to eight magistrates, each magistrate looking after the indigent Negroes in his precinct. There was a fund, composed of fees paid for the approval of contracts for service, instruments of apprenticeship, licenses, fines, penalties, forfeitures, and wages of convicts, for the relief of indigent Negroes. If this fund was insufficient, the board might impose a tax of one dollar upon all male persons of color between eighteen and fifty, and fifty cents upon each female between eighteen and forty-five. This tax had to be paid on the day fixed or the person rendered himself liable to pay a double tax. It was the duty of every occupant of premises to make a report to the magistrate of any indigent colored person thereon, and the magistrate had to make inquiry into the condition and wants of such Negroes so reported. Moreover, the magistrate had to make a semiannual report of the condition of such Negroes to the chairman of the Board of Relief. The machinery for taking care of Negro paupers was worked out in more detail than it would be profitable to go into here.

South Carolina made also these very humane provisions: Where, upon any farm or lands, there were, on December 21, 1865, persons of color who were formerly the slaves of the owner, lessee, or occupant of the farm or lands present there on November 10, 1865, and had been there six months previous, helpless, either from old age, infancy, disease, or other cause, and unable to maintain themselves and had no parent or other relative able to maintain them or to provide other houses or quarters, it was not lawful for the present or any subsequent owner, lessee, or occupant before January 1, 1867, to evict such helpless person of color, under penalty of a fine of fifty dollars, or imprisonment of one month.

The law of Mississippi^[116] provided that the same liabilities should rest on Negroes to support their indigents as upon white persons to support theirs. It levied a tax of one dollar upon every freedman, free Negro, or mulatto between eighteen and sixty to go into the Freedmen’s Pauper Fund. If a Negro refused to pay the tax, he might be arrested and hired out till he had worked out the amount.

The Southern States between 1865 and 1868 passed many statutes relative to the marital relations of Negroes and to their right to testify in court. But these statutes are to be discussed in later chapters. It may be said, however, in passing, that the district judge, so often referred to in connection with the South Carolina laws, was a special officer whose main duty was to preside over cases and disputes to which Negroes were parties.

This chapter has been confined to the early industrial distinctions between the races—that is, to those laws which related to the rights of the Negro as a bread-winner. These are the distinctions brought forward by those who believed in radical reconstruction measures in the South, as an argument for their position. It was urged by such that, unless Congress stepped in and took a hand, the Southern States would reënslave the Negro: they pointed particularly to the laws of Mississippi and South Carolina in confirmation of their contention. And there was apparently good ground for such a view. The laws providing that colored laborers should be called servants and their employers masters, that they should arise at a certain time and work so many hours per day, that they could not leave the premises or receive visitors without the master’s consent, and the like, sounded very much like prescribing the duties and privileges of a slave. But, on the other hand, many of the requirements were for the protection of the Negro. Such, for instance, were the statutes requiring contracts for service to be in writing and the terms of them explained to the Negro; that helpless ex-slaves should not be evicted from their old homes within two years from January 1, 1865; that Negro paupers should be cared for; and that the master must teach his apprentice to read and write, must give him good food and clothing, and treat him humanely.

A discussion, however, of the merits of these early laws is out of place here. But it is only fair to remember, in reading them, that the Southern legislatures were, in many instances, only following precedents that had been set by the free States in dealing with free Negroes, and that the States, either Northern or Southern, had not yet looked upon the Negro as a citizen with the rights guaranteed him by the amended Federal Constitution. Industrial conditions in the South were so demoralized by the War and Emancipation that the legislatures considered it imperative upon them to take immediate and positive steps to establish an industrial relation between the races.

Practically all of these laws were repealed or became dead letters as soon as the Fourteenth Amendment was passed or, at least, as soon as the government of the Southern States went into the hands of the Reconstructionists. But they are still interesting historically as having furnished an argument for the radical régime of Reconstruction which Thaddeus Stevens and his supporters inaugurated and advanced.