Examples of Slave Laws in the following topics:
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- Southern rape laws embodied race-based
double standards.
- Their bodies technically belonged to their owners by law.
- Beginning
in 1662, Southern colonies adopted into law the principle of partus sequitur
ventrem, by which children of slave women took the status of their mother
regardless of the father's identity.
- This was a departure from English common
law, which held that children took their father's status.
- The law relieved men of the
responsibility of supporting their children and confined the "secret"
of miscegenation to the slave quarters.
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- Under the system of slavery in the United States, freedom for slaves was only possible by running away (which was difficult and illegal to do) or by manumission by the slave owners, which was frequently regulated or prohibited by law.
- Between 1777 and 1804, anti-slavery laws or constitutions were passed in every state north of the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon Line.
- In 1850, Congress (disproportionally represented by Southerners) passed a more stringent fugitive slave federal law.
- Penalties were imposed upon marshals who refused to enforce the law or from whom a fugitive should escape, and upon individuals who aided black people to escape .
- Massachusetts had abolished slavery in 1783, but the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 required government officials to assist slavecatchers in capturing fugitives within the state.
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- Some jurisdictions passed “personal
liberty laws," which mandated a jury trial before alleged fugitive slaves could
be moved.
- In some cases,
juries refused to convict individuals who had been indicted under federal law.
- Pennsylvania (1842) that states did not have to
offer aid in the hunting or recapture of slaves, which greatly weakened the law
of 1793.
- In response to the weakening of the original fugitive slave law, the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made any federal marshal or other official who did
not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000.
- Law-enforcement
officials everywhere now had greater incentive to arrest anyone suspected of
being a runaway slave, and sympathizers had much more to risk in aiding those
seeking freedom.
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- Slave codes were laws that were established in each state to define the status of slaves and the rights of their owners.
- Slaves codes were state laws established to regulate the relationship
between slave and owner as well as to legitimize the institution of slavery.
- In
practice, these codes placed harsh restrictions on slaves' already limited freedoms
and gave slave owners absolute power over their slaves.
- Occasionally slave codes provided slaves with legal
protection in the event of a legal dispute, but only at the discretion of the
slave’s owner.
- Slaves were kept tightly in control through the establishment of slave codes, or laws dictating their status and rights.
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- Influenced by restrictive laws and brutal treatment, slaves combined African and Christian customs to form a culture of survival and resistance.
- In many respects, American slave culture was a culture of survival and defiance against the American slave system.
- In the absence of a successful slave revolution, as in Haiti (although there were some abortive attempts by black slaves to violently claim their freedom), American slaves practiced other forms of resistance.
- Such laws commonly forbade slaves to learn to read or write or to associate with free Africans, and free blacks were forbidden from voting or holding public office.
- Literate slaves taught illiterates how to read and write, despite state laws that forbid slaves from literacy.
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- Prior to the rebellion, Virginia law also had allowed the teaching of slaves to read and write and had encouraged their training in skilled trades.
- After plans for the rebellion were quelled, many slave holders greatly restricted the slaves' rights of travel.
- Further, the Virginia Assembly in 1808 banned the hiring out of slaves, and the Emancipation Law of 1806 required freed blacks to leave the state within twelve months or face re-enslavement.
- Prior to Gabriel's Rebellion, some Virginian slave owners were wary of the increasing number of free blacks and argued for stricter manumission laws.
- For many southern white slave owners, Gabriel's Rebellion proved that slaves would tend toward rebellion and resistance if not kept forcibly contained and controlled.
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- For instance, there were slaves who
employed white workers, slave doctors who treated upper-class white patients,
and slaves who rented out their labor.
- As early as the adoption of partus sequitur ventrem into Virginia law in 1662,
the children born of sexual relations between any man and a black woman were
classified as slaves regardless of the father's race or status.
- In
1850, a publication provided guidance to slave owners on how to produce the
"ideal slave":
- In the mid-nineteenth century,
slaving states passed laws making education of slaves illegal.
- In Virginia in
1841, the punishment for breaking such a law was 20 lashes with a whip to the
slave and a fine of $100 to the teacher.
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- Influenced by restrictive laws and brutal treatment, slaves combined African and Christian customs to form a relatively homogeneous culture.
- In most states, slaves were forbidden to read or write.
- To regulate the relationship between slave and owner, including legal support for keeping slaves as property, state legislatures adopted various slave codes to reinforce white legal sanctions over the enslaved black population.
- Such laws commonly forbade slaves to learn to read or write or to associate with free people of color; free blacks were proscribed from voting or holding public office.
- Slaves on a South Carolina plantation (The Old Plantation, c. 1790)
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- A literate slave named Jemmy led a large group of slaves in an armed insurrection against white colonists, killing several before militia stopped them.
- This law imposed new limits on slaves’ behavior, prohibiting slaves from assembling, growing their own food, learning to write, and traveling freely.
- In addition, one in five New Yorkers was a slave, and tensions ran high between slaves and the free population, especially in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion.
- Searching for solutions and convinced slaves were the principal danger, nervous British authorities interrogated almost 200 slaves and accused them of conspiracy.
- Seventy slaves were sold to the West Indies.
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- The slaves' owners had suspicion of the uprising, and two slaves told their owner, Mosby Sheppard, about the plans.
- That slave did not receive the full reward.
- Gabriel, his two brothers, and 23 other slaves were hanged.
- Fears of a slave revolt regularly swept major slaveholding communities.
- Prior to the rebellion, Virginia law had allowed education of slaves to read and write, and the training of slaves in skilled trades.