lina act of the same year had declared it unlawful for any number of slaves, free negroes, mulattoes, or mestizoes to assemble together, even though in the presence of white persons, "for mental instruction or religious worship." The same influences were felt in Virginia, aggravated, perhaps, by two successive alarms of insurrection, one in 1799, the other in 1801. The freedom of emancipation allowed by the act of 1782 was substantially taken away in 1805, by a provision that thenceforward emancipated slaves remaining in the state for twelve months after obtaining their freedom should be apprehended and sold for the benefit of the poor of the county — a forfeiture given afterward to the literary fund. Overseers of the poor, binding out black or mulatto orphans as apprentices, were forbidden to require their masters to teach them reading, writing, or arithmetic. Free blacks coming into the state were to be sent back to the places whence they came. The legislature of Kentucky presently (1808) went so far as to provide that free negroes coming into that state should give security to depart within twenty days, and on failure to do so should be sold for a year — the same process to be repeated if, twenty days after the end of the year, they were still found within the state. 'Such is the fate,' exclaims Marshall, the historian of Kentucky, indignant at this barbarous piece of legislation, 'of men not represented, at the hands of law-makers, often regardless of the rights of others, and even of the first principles of humanity.' Yet this statute remains in force to the present day, and many like ones, in other states, have since been added to it. Whether the excessive dread of the increase of free negroes, which still prevails, and which seems every day to grow more and more rabid throughout the southern states, has any better foundation than mere suspicion and fear, is not so certain. In Delaware and Maryland the free colored population is far greater in proportion than elsewhere; yet life and property are more secure in those than in any other slaveholding states, nor are they inferior in wealth and industry."[1]
- ↑ Hildreth.
