For this reason, the American slave-code, which, as we have already seen, embraces, substantially, all the barbarities of that of ancient Rome, has had added to it a set of laws more cruel than any which ancient and heathen Rome ever knew,—laws designed to shut against the slave his last refuge,—the humanity of his master. The master, in ancient Rome, might give his slave whatever advantages of education he chose, or at any time emancipate him, and the state did not interfere to prevent.[[16]]
But in America the laws, throughout all the slave states, most rigorously forbid, in the first place, the education of the slave. We do not profess to give all these laws, but a few striking specimens may be presented. Our authority is Judge Stroud’s “Sketch of the Laws of Slavery.”
Stroud’s Sketch, p. 88.
The legislature of South Carolina, in 1740, enounced the following preamble:—“Whereas, the having of slaves taught to write, or suffering them to be employed in writing, may be attended with great inconveniences;” and enacted that the crime of teaching a slave to write, or of employing a slave as a scribe, should be punished by a fine of one hundred pounds, current money. If the reader will turn now to the infamous “protective” statute, enacted by the same legislature, in the same year, he will find that the same penalty has been appointed for the cutting out of the tongue, putting out of the eye, cruel scalding, &c., of any slave, as for the offence of teaching him to write! That is to say, that to teach him to write, and to put out his eyes, are to be regarded as equally reprehensible.
Stroud’s Sketch, p. 89. 2 Brevard’s Digest, pp. 254–5.
That there might be no doubt of the “great and fundamental policy” of the state, and that there might be full security against the “great inconveniences” of “having of slaves taught to write,” it was enacted, in 1800, “That assemblies of slaves, free negroes, &c., * * * * for the purpose of mental instruction, in a confined or secret place, &c. &c., is [are] declared to be an unlawful meeting;” and the officers are required to enter such confined places, and disperse the “unlawful assemblage,” inflicting, at their discretion, “such corporal punishment, not exceeding twenty lashes, upon such slaves, free negroes, &c., as they may judge necessary for deterring them from the like unlawful assemblage in future.”
Stroud, pp. 88, 89.
The statute-book of Virginia is adorned with a law similar to the one last quoted.
Stroud’s Sketch, pp. 89, 90.
The offence of teaching a slave to write was early punished, in Georgia, as in South Carolina, by a pecuniary fine. But the city of Savannah seems to have found this penalty insufficient to protect it from “great inconveniences,” and we learn, by a quotation in the work of Judge Stroud from a number of “The Portfolio,” that “the city has passed an ordinance, by which any person that teaches any person of color, slave or free, to read or write, or causes such person to be so taught, is subjected to a fine of thirty dollars for each offence; and every person of color who shall keep a school, to teach reading or writing, is subject to a fine of thirty dollars, or to be imprisoned ten days, and whipped thirty-nine lashes.”