ures separating the black and the white races before the law. . . The other day the subject of apprentices was brought up, and apprentices, white and black, were placed on the same footing, and in respect to both the employer is required to have them taught reading, writing and arithmetic. . . In reference to rape, abduction, and offences of that sort, all discrimination has been withdrawn as between offences committed on persons of one or the other color. . . We are wiping out gradually all distinctions; they are not very numerous in our laws. You would be surprised, in going over our legislation, to find how thoroughly the free negro has been the equal of the white man before the law in Virginia. He has always had the same right to sue, to sue as a pauper or as a paying suitor. His cases have been all tried in the same way. He has always had the same right to call witnesses as the white man. He has had the same right to acquire property, except in slaves; and it is only of late years that he has been prohibited from acquiring slaves.

There was some difference in regard to the mode of trying minor offences committed by a free negro; but the distinction was in favor of the negro. As, for instance, it requires the verdict of a jury to acquit a white man of an offence in a capital case; but in the case of a negro, slave or free, . . the dissent of one magistrate out of five cleared him. It is a matter perfectly well understood by lawyers, who have practiced as criminal lawyers in Virginia, that a slave or a free negro had always the decided advantage over a white man in criminal defences. .

Wherever you come to a class of offences in regard to tampering with slaves, or withdrawing them from their obligations to their masters, or anything of that kind, the laws were severe, and the free negro was placed, in some respects, in a worse condition than a white man, but those cases are very few; and now the universal sentiment and feeling of the people is to give to the negro, in law, all the results of the fact of his freedom. In regard to negro testimony there is a diversity of sentiment among our people. I believe everybody agrees that one of the effects of freedom will be, sooner or later, to place the negro and the white man, in this matter of testimony, on a perfect

equality before the law, . . but there is a diversity of opinion in reference to the expediency and safety of undertaking to do that thing all at one job. I think the more prudent of our people are disposed to do that gradually, taking a step at a time, and ascertaining how it works. I think the feeling now

is to place in the hands of the negro the right to testify in all matters affecting his person, his property, or his family; to testify in his own case, as a white man would do; and to testify in criminal prosecutions for offences against his person, his property, or his family. . . The disposition is to let that be the first step, and to go on gradually. You, gentlemen of the north, who have not a mass of 300,000 or 400,000 suddenly emancipated negroes in your midst, can hardly appreciate the caution we feel to be necessary in dealing with any of these problems. However much we may be determined to do them justice, there are questions of safety and expediency which must be considered by prudent and discreet men. . . The desire and determination is, as rapidly as possible, to remove all those differences before the law, and to place the blacks on an equal footing of equality before the law. . . There are several things to be taken into consideration. In the first place, we must let the public feeling of the white people mature. Our local government must conform to the judgment and opinion. of our own people, and they must have time to make up their minds to this thing. If you attempt to force the matter, you will see that it will bring about an enmity between the races.

The Negro under the Provisional Government Judge Henry D. Clayton's Address to the Grand Jury of Pike County, Alabama. Judge Clayton had been a Confederate major general.

[1866]

AMONG the terms upon which the Confederate States terminated their heroic struggle for a separate and independent nationality, was one which guaranteed freedom to this race. Although we deplore that result, as alike injurious to the country and fatal to the negroes, the law has been placed upon our statute books in solemn form by us through our delegates.

The laws for their government, as slaves, have been repealed and others substituted adapted to their new condition. We are in honor bound to observe these laws. For myself I do not hesitate to say in private and public, officially and unofficially, that, after doing all I could to avert it, when I took off my sword in surrender I determined to observe the terms of that surrender with the same earnestness and fidelity with which I first shouldered my musket. . .

There is nothing in the history of the past of which we need be ashamed. Whilst we cherish its glorious memories, and that of our martyred dead, we . . remember there is still work for the living, and set ourselves about the task of reëstablishing society and rebuilding our ruined homes. Others unwilling to submit to this condition of things may seek their homes abroad. You and I are bound to this soil for life, for better or for worse. What then is our duty? To repine at our lot? That is not the part of manliness; but to rise up, going forward, performing our highest missions as men.

Let us deal with the facts before us as they are.

The negro

has been made free. It is no work of his. He did not seek freedom, and nominally free as he is, he is, beyond expression, helpless by his want of experience, and doubly helpless by his want of comprehension to understand and appreciate his condition. From the very nature of his surroundings, so far as promoting his welfare and adapting him to this new relation to society are concerned, all agencies from abroad must prove inadequate..

To remedy the evils growing out of the abolition of slavery it seems two things are necessary: First, a recognition of the freedom of the race as a fact, the enactment of just and humane laws, and the willing enforcement of them. Secondly, by treating them with perfect fairness and justice in our contracts, and in every way in which we may be brought in contact with them.

By the first we convince the world of our good faith, and get rid of the system of espionage [Freedmen's Bureau], by removing the pretext of its necessity; and by the second, we secure the services of the negroes, teach them their places, and how to keep them, and convince them at last that we are indeed

their best friends. . . We need the labor of the negro all over the country, and it is worth the effort to secure it. . . I might enlarge upon this subject by showing the depressing effect upon the country which would be produced by the sudden removal of so much of its productive labor. Its effect would be the decreased value of the lands, decreased agricultural products, decreased revenue to the State and country, arising from these sources, with their attendant results.

Besides all this, which appeals to our interests, gentlemen, do we owe the negro any grudge? What has he himself done to provoke our hostility? Shall we be angry with him because freedom has been forced upon him? Shall it excite our animosity because he has been suddenly and without any effort on his part, torn loose from the protection of a kind master? He is proud to call you Master yet. He may have been the companion of your boyhood. He may be older than you, and perhaps carried you in his arms when an infant. You may be bound to him by a thousand ties which only a Southern man knows, and which he alone can feel in all its force. It may be that when, only a few years ago, you girded on your cartridge-box and shouldered your trusty rifle, to go to meet the invaders of your country, you committed to his care your home and your loved ones; and when you were far away upon the weary march, upon the dreadful battle-field, in the trenches, and on the picket line, many and many a time you thought of that faithful old negro, and your heart warmed towards him.

A Negro's View of the Black Laws

John Wallace, Carpet Bag Rule in Florida, 1885, p. 35.
was a negro politician in Florida during Reconstruction. [1865-1866]

Wallace

Ir is true, that some of the laws passed by the Legislature of 1865 seem to be very diabolical and oppressive to the freedmen, but when we consider the long established institution of slavery, and the danger to which the Southern whites imagined they might be subjected by reason of these people, who had always been subject only to the command of their old masters, we are of the opinion that any other people under like circumstances,

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would have passed the same character of laws relative to the freedmen. Many of these laws we know, of our own knowledge, were passed only to deter the freedmen from committing crime. For instance, the law prohibiting colored people handling arms of any kind without a license, was a dead letter, except in some cases where some of the freedmen would go around. plantations hunting, with apparently no other occupation, such a person would be suspected of hunting something that did not belong to him and his arms would be taken away from him. We have often passed through the streets of Tallahassee with our gun upon our shoulder, without a license, and were never disturbed by any one during the time this law was in force. The law in regard to contracts between the whites and the freedmen was taken advantage of by some of the whites, and the freedmen did not get justice; but the great majority of the whites carried out their contracts to the letter, and the freedmen did as well as could be expected under the changed condition of things. These laws were taken advantage of by the carpetbaggers to marshal the freedmen to their support after the freedmen had been given the right to vote.