Free persons of color who shall migrate into that State, may be seized and sold as runaway slaves; and if they migrate out of the State for more than ninety days, they can never return under the same penalty.
This extraordinary use of the word migrate furnishes a new battering ram against the free colored class, which is every where so odious to slave-owners. A visit to relations in another State may be called migrating; being taken up and detained by kidnappers, over ninety days, may be called migrating;—for where neither the evidence of the sufferer nor any of his own color is allowed, it will evidently amount to this.
In South Carolina, if a free negro cross the line of the State, he can never return.
In 1831, Mississippi passed a law to expel all free colored persons under sixty and over sixteen years of age from the State, within ninety days, unless they could prove good characters, and obtain from the court a certificate of the same, for which they paid three dollars; these certificates might be revoked at the discretion of the county courts. If such persons do not quit the State within the time specified, or if they return to it, they may be sold for a term not exceeding five years.
In Tennessee, slaves are not allowed to be emancipated unless they leave the State forthwith. Any free colored person emigrating into this State, is fined from ten to fifty dollars, and hard labor in the penitentiary from one to two years.
North Carolina has made a law subjecting any vessel with free colored persons on board to thirty days' quarantine; as if freedom were as bad as the cholera! Any person of color coming on shore from such vessels is seized and imprisoned, till the vessel departs; and the captain is fined five hundred dollars; and if he refuse to take the colored seaman away, and pay all the expenses of his imprisonment, he is fined five hundred more. If the sailor do not depart within ten days after his captain's refusal, he must be whipped thirty-nine lashes; and all colored persons, bond or free, who communicate with him, receive the same.
In Georgia, there is a similar enactment. The prohibition is, in both States, confined to merchant vessels, (it would be imprudent to meddle with vessels of war;) and any colored person communicating with such seaman is whipped not
exceeding thirty lashes. If the captain refuse to carry away seamen thus detained, and pay the expenses of their imprisonment, he shall be fined five hundred dollars, and also imprisoned, not exceeding three months.
These State laws are a direct violation of the Laws of Nations, and our treaties; and may involve the United States in a foreign war.
Colored seamen are often employed in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English vessels. These nations are bound to know the United States Laws; but can they be expected to know the enactments of particular States and cities? and if they know them, are they bound to observe them, if they interfere with the established rules of nations? When Mr. Wirt pronounced these laws unconstitutional, great excitement was produced in South Carolina. The Governor of that State, in his Message to the Legislature, implied that separation from the Union was the only remedy, if the laws of the Southern States could not be enforced. They seem to require unconditional submission abroad as well as at home.