provided for slaves found assembling or engaged in
conspiracy. Georgia enacted a measure to the effect that none might
give credit to free persons of color without order from their guardian
required by law and, if insolvent, they might be bound out. It further
provided that neither free Negroes nor slaves might preach or exhort
an assembly of more than seven unless licensed by justices on
certificate of three ordained ministers. They were also forbidden to
carry firearms.[56] North Carolina, in which Negroes voted until 1834,
enacted in 1831 a special law prohibiting free Negroes from preaching
and slaves from keeping house or going at large as free men. To
collect fines of free Negroes the law authorized that they might be
sold.[57] The new constitution of the State in 1835 restricted the
right of suffrage to white men. South Carolina passed in 1836 a law
prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read and write under penalties,
forbidding too the employment of a person of color as salesman in any
house, store or shop used for trading. Mississippi had already met
most of these requirements in the slave code in the year 1830.[58]

In Louisiana it was deemed necessary to strengthen the slave code. An
act relative to the introduction of slaves provided that slaves should
not be introduced except by persons immigrating to reside and citizens
who might become owners.[59] Previous legislation had already provided
severe penalties for persons teaching Negroes to read and write and
also had made provision for compelling free colored persons to leave
the State.[60] In 1832 the State of Alabama enacted a law making it
unlawful for any free person of color to settle within that
commonwealth. Slaves or free persons of color should not be taught to
spell, read or write. It provided penalties for Negroes writing passes
and for free blacks associating or trading with slaves. More than five
male slaves were declared an unlawful assembly but slaves could attend
worship conducted by whites yet neither slaves nor free Negroes were
permitted to preach unless before five respectable slaveholders and
the Negroes so preaching were to be licensed by some neighboring
religious society. It was provided, however, that these sections of
the article did not apply to or affect any free person of color who,
by the treaty between the United States and Spain, became citizens of
the United States.[61]

So many ills of the Negro followed, therefore, that o