At the session of 1806-7, "An Act to Amend the Act Entitled 'an Act Regulating Black and Mulatto Persons,'" was passed amending the old law. The first act simply required "a certificate of freedom"; the amended law required Negroes and Mulattoes intending to settle in Ohio to give a bond not to become a charge upon the county in which they settled. Section four reads as follows:
"4. That no black or mulatto person or persons shall hereafter be permitted to be sworn or give evidence in any court of record or elsewhere in this State, in any cause depending or matter of controversy where either party to the sale is a white person, or in any prosecution which shall be instituted in behalf of this State, against any white person."[38]
But this law did not apply to persons a shade nearer white than Mulatto [the seven-eighths law].[39] Their testimony was admissible, while that of Negroes and Mulattoes was not admitted against them. In Jordan vs. Smith [1846], 14, Ohio, p. 199: "A black person sued by a white, may make affidavit to a plea so as to put the plaintiff to proof."
Attention has been called to the fact that the fugitive-slave law was respected in Ohio. In 1818-19, a law was passed to prevent the unlawful kidnapping of free Negroes, which, in its preamble, recites the provisions of the law of Congress, passed February 12, 1793, respecting fugitives from service and labor.[40] And in 1839 the Legislature passed another act relating to "fugitives from labor," etc., paving the way by the following recital:
"Whereas, The second section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States declares that 'no person' [etc., reciting it]; and whereas the laws now in force within the State of Ohio are wholly inadequate to the protection pledged by this provision of the Constitution to the Southern States of this Union; and whereas it is the duty of those who reap the largest measure of benefits conferred by the Constitution to recognize to their full extent the obligations which that instrument imposes; and whereas it is the deliberate conviction of this General Assembly that the Constitution can only be sustained as it was framed by a spirit of just compromise; therefore."
Sec. 1. Authorizes judges of courts of record, "or any justice of the peace, or the mayor of any city or town corporate," on application, etc., of claimant, to bring the fugitive before a judge within the county where the warrant was issued, or before some State judge with certain cautions as to proving the official character of the officer issuing the warrant; gives the form of warrant, directing the fugitive to be brought before, etc., "to be be dealt with as the law directs."[41]
J. Peck, Esq. [9, Ohio, p. 212], refers to the laws of 1818-19, and 1830-31, as a recognition by the State of Ohio of the power of Congress to pass the act of 1793, though that the act was not specially mentioned.
The first constitution of Ohio [1802] restricted the right of suffrage to "all white male inhabitants." "In all elections, all white male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State one year next preceding the election, and who have paid or are charged with a State or county tax, shall enjoy the right of an elector," etc.[42] This was repeated in the Bill of Rights adopted in 1851.[43]
Article iv., Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States says: "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." The question as to whether free Negroes were included in the above was discussed at great length in the Dred Scott case, where Chief-Justice Taney took the ground that a Negro was not a citizen under the fourth article of the Constitution. But the fourth article of the Articles of Confederation [1778] recognized free Negroes as citizens. It is given here:
"Art. 4.—The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States—paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted—shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof, respectively; provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State, from any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided, also, that no imposition, duty, or restriction shall be laid by any State on the property of the United States, or either of them."[44]