“Dunno, ser,” responded a voice which Cato recognized by the language to be a negro.
It was evident that a fugitive slave had been captured, and was about to be returned for the reward. And it was equally evident to Cato that the slave had been caught by the owner of the pot of stewed chicken that he then held in his hand, and he felt a thrill of gladness as he returned to the road and pursued his journey.
CHAPTER XIV.
In the year 1850, there were fifty thousand free colored people in the slave States, the greater number residing in Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. In all the States these people were allowed but few privileges not given to the slaves; and in many their condition was thought to be even worse than that of the bondmen. Laws, the most odious, commonly known as the “Black Code,” were enacted and enforced in every State. These provided for the punishment of the free colored people—punishment which was not mentioned in the common law for white persons; for binding out minors, a species of slavery, and naming thirty-two offences more for blacks than had been enacted for the whites, and eight of which made it capital punishment for the offences committed.
Public opinion, which is often stronger than law, was severe in the extreme. In many of the Southern cities, including Charleston, S. C., a colored lady, free, and owning the fine house in which she lived, was not allowed to wear a veil in the public streets.
In passing through the thoroughfares, blacks of both sexes were compelled to take the outside, on pain of being kicked into the street, or sent to the lock-up and whipped.
As late as 1858, a movement was made in several of the Southern States to put an exorbitant tax upon them, and in lieu of which they were to be sold into life-long slavery. Maryland led off with a bill being introduced into the Legislature by Mr. Hover, of Frederick County, for levying a tax of two dollars per annum on all colored male inhabitants of the State over twenty-one years of age, and under fifty-five, and of one dollar on every female over eighteen and under forty-five, to be collected by the collectors of the State taxes, and devoted to the use of the Colonization Society. In case of the refusal to pay of a property-holder or housekeeper, his or her goods were to be seized and sold; if not a property-holder, the body of the non-paying person was to be seized, and hired out to the lowest bidder who would agree to pay the tax; and in case of not being able to hire said delinquents out, they were to be sold to any person who would pay the amount of tax and costs for the lowest period of service!
Tennessee followed in the same strain. The annexed protest of one of her noblest sons,—Judge Catron, appeared at the time. He said:
“My objection to the bill is, that it proposes to commit an outrage, to perpetrate an oppression and cruelty. This is the plain truth, and it is idle to mince words to soften the fact. Let us look the proposition boldly in the face. This depressed and helpless portion of our population is designed to be driven out, or to be enslaved for life, and their property forfeited, as no slave can hold property. The mothers are to be sold, or driven away from their children, many of them infants. The children are to be bound out until they are twenty-one years of age, and then to leave the State or be sold; which means that they are to be made slaves for life, in fact. Now, of these women and children, there is hardly one in ten that is of unmixed negro blood. Some are half-white; many have half-white mothers and white fathers, making a cast of 87 1-2-100ths of white blood; many have a third cross, in whom the negro blood is almost extinct; such is the unfortunate truth. This description of people, who were born free, and lived as free persons, are to be introduced as slaves into our families, or into our negro quarters, there to be under an overseer, or they are to be sold to the negro-trader and sent South, there to be whipped by overseers—and to preach rebellion in the negro quarters—as they will preach rebellion everywhere that they may be driven to by this unjust law, whether it be amongst us here in Tennessee or south of us on the cotton and sugar plantations, or in the abolition meetings in the free States. Nor will the women be the least effective in preaching a crusade, when begging money in the North, to relieve their children, left behind in this State, in bondage.