Slave laws were laws relating to slavery and slaves, particularly with respect to the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in America. Beginning in the 1630s, colonial assemblies in English America, and later in the new United States, used laws and constitutions to enslave Africans and deny free blacks civil rights, including freedom of movement, marital freedom, professional freedom, and, of course, citizenship and suffrage. For the next two centuries, blacks and a minority of whites criticized the oppressive racist system. Blacks used a variety of tactics to challenge their slavery, from fleeing to inciting revolt. Others used fiery rhetoric and printed leaflets. In the 1760s, when whites began to look for political and philosophical arguments to challenge what they perceived as London`s political oppression, they referred to their experience as “slavery.” The colonists also developed persuasive arguments that made some of them realize that enslaving Africans was just as bad as what they called British oppression. Massachusetts attorney James Otis wiped the mirror in The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Prove and said, “The settlers, black and white. are born free British subjects. Right to all essential civil rights”.
The Declaration of Independence polished the tinted mirror by stating: “We take these truths for granted, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. However, the U.S. Constitution nullified these achievements by providing federal protection against slavery; it was an alliance with death, as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison later claimed. After the Revolution, many states passed black laws to deprive blacks of the same rights as whites. Blacks generally could not vote, testify in court against a white man, or serve on a jury. States have banned black children from public schools. The Civil War offered the promise of equality with whites, but at the end of the war, many Southern states immediately adopted black codes to deny blacks the gains made in emancipation. Section 29 Sheriffs, coroners and police officers shall, after knowing or being informed of an unlawful assembly of slaves, whites, free negroes or mulattoes, or riots, beatings or unlawful assembly of slaves, repress them and bring the perpetrators without warrant before a county justice of the peace for treatment in accordance with the law.
Between 1837 and 1861, additional restrictions on slaves and free blacks were enacted by laws and court decisions. Slave law became stricter and stricter as the number of slaves in the state increased and the fear of slave rebellions increased. In 1843, a law was passed prohibiting the immigration of free blacks to Arkansas. This law also required blacks already living in the state to post a $500 bond and provide proof of liberty. In 1859, the Arkansas legislature passed a law stating that any free black person over the age of twenty-one was prohibited from living in the state unless enslaved by a master. The slave trade was abolished throughout the British Empire by the Slave Trade Act of 1807. In 1833, the Abolition of Slavery Act ended slavery throughout the British Empire. [23] There was no central English slave code; Each colony developed its own code. In the United States, individual states ratified new constitutions after independence, but their laws were generally a continuation of the laws those regions had retained prior to that date, and their slavery codes remained unchanged. [ref.
After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 transferred control of the region to the United States, the legislature of the newly formed Louisiana Territory enacted a comprehensive set of slavery laws in 1804, using the Black Code of 1724 as a model. The Code of 1804 eliminated some of the most ruthless features of the Black Code, such as marking and cutting ears, while keeping firmly rooted the emphasis on the master`s responsibility for the actions of his slaves. Several other slave laws were passed between 1804 and 1835, the last full year of Arkansas` territorial status, including an ordinance passed in 1825 creating a slave patrol. The patrol was made up of white citizens tasked with inspecting slave quarters and searching for illegal gathering places. These patrols were a central element in Arkansas communities with large slave populations until after the Civil War. In 1835, Governor John Pope appointed attorneys John Steele and James McCampbell to summarize all the regulations passed since 1804 in a summary of Arkansas` laws. This summary contained all the slave laws enacted by previous territorial governments. Slaves were forbidden to carry arms, gather with slaves of other owners, move away from an owner`s property without a passport, buy or sell goods, obtain alcohol, or ally with whites without the master`s permission.
There is no number for reaction. If you are looking for the exact number of free blacks at the time of slavery, here is a graph I made in 2008 with this information. www.ncpedia.org/sites/default/files/census_stats_1790-1860.pdf But while slaves had the slave code, free blacks had codes for what they could do. Disenfranchisement, possession of firearms, tax increases, etc. The slave laws ended with the Civil War, but were replaced during Reconstruction (1865-77) by other discriminatory laws known as the “black codes”. The black codes were attempts to control newly released African Americans by banning them from certain professions, serving as jurors, owning firearms, voting, and pursuing other professions. First, the U.S. Congress defied the black codes by enacting laws such as the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments in the United States.
