[258] Cobb, op. cit. p. 240 sqq. Stroud, op. cit. p. 99. Goodell, American Slave Code, p. 105 sqq. Wheeler, op. cit. p. 199. According to the Civil Code of Louisiana, “slaves cannot marry without the consent of their masters, and their marriages do not produce any of the civil effects which result from such contract” (Morgan, Civil Code of Louisiana, art. 182, p. 29).
[259] Goodell, American Slave Code, p. 111. In 1835 the query was presented to a Baptist Association of ministers, “whether, in case of involuntary separation of such a character as to preclude all future intercourse, the parties may be allowed to marry again?” The answer was, “that such separation among persons situated as our slaves are, is civilly a separation by death, and they believe that, in the sight of God, it would be so viewed. To forbid second marriages in such cases would be to expose the parties not only to greater hardships and stronger temptations, but to church censure for acting in obedience to their masters.” Incidentally here the fact leaks out that slave cohabitation is enforced by the authority of the masters for the increase of their human chattels (Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, p. 185).
Yet though slaves were regarded as chattels, the master could not do with his slave exactly what he pleased. We have noticed that the life of the slave was in some degree, though very insufficiently, protected by law,[260] and that a master who mutilated his slave was subject to a slight penalty.[261] The law also took care to prohibit the master from doing things which were considered injurious to the community or the State. There was a great fear of teaching negroes to read and write. William Knox, in a tract addressed to “the venerable Society for propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts” in the year 1768, remarks that “instruction renders them less fit or less willing to labour,” and that, if they were universally taught to read, there would undoubtedly be a general insurrection of the negroes leading to the massacre of their owners.[262] A similar fear underlies the laws on the subject which we meet with in the codes of some of the Slave States. According to the Negro Act of 1740 for South Carolina, any person who instructed a slave in writing was subject to a fine of one hundred pounds;[263] but this enactment was later on considered too liberal. A law of 1834 placed under the ban all efforts to teach the coloured race either reading or writing, and the punishment was no longer a pecuniary fine only, but, besides, imprisonment for six months or a shorter time or, if the offender was a free person of colour, whipping not exceeding fifty lashes.[264] In Georgia a law of 1770, which prohibited the instruction of slaves in reading and writing, was in 1833 followed by an act which extended the prohibition to free persons of colour.[265] In Louisiana the teaching of slaves was punished with imprisonment for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.[266] North Carolina allowed slaves to be made acquainted with arithmetical calculations, but sternly interdicted instruction in reading and writing;[267] whilst Alabama warred with the rudiments of reading, forbidding any coloured persons, bond or free, to be taught not only reading and writing, but spelling.[268] In all these States the prohibitions referred to the master of the slave as well as to other persons. In Virginia, on the other hand, the master might teach his slave whatever he liked, but others might not.[269]
[260] Supra, [p. 428 sq.]
[262] Knox, Three Tracts respecting the Conversion and Instruction of the Free Indians and Negroe Slaves in the Colonies, p. 15 sq.
[263] Brevard, op. cit. ii. 243.
[264] McCord, Statutes at large of South Carolina, vii. 468.
[265] Prince, op. cit. pp. 785, 658.
[266] Peirce, Taylor, and King, op. cit. p. 552.