teaching
a slave to read or write.

For publishing, or circulating, in the State of North Carolina, any
pamphlet or paper having an _evident tendency_ to excite slaves, or free
persons of color, to insurrection or resistance, imprisonment not less
than one year, _and_ standing in the pillory, _and_ whipping, at the
discretion of the court, for the first offence; and death for the
second. The same offence punished with death in Georgia, without any
reservation. In Mississippi, the same as in Georgia. In Louisiana, the
same offence punished either with imprisonment for life, or death, at
the discretion of the court. In Virginia, the first offence of this sort
is punished with thirty-nine lashes, the second with death.

With regard to publications having a _tendency_ to promote discontent
among slaves, their masters are so very jealous, that it would be
difficult to find _any_ book, that would not come under their
condemnation. The Bible, and the Declaration of Independence are
certainly unsafe. The preamble to the North Carolina law declares,
that the _Alphabet_ has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction; I suppose
it is because _freedom_ may be spelt out of it. A storekeeper in South
Carolina was nearly ruined by having unconsciously imported certain
printed _handkerchiefs_, which his neighbors deemed seditious. A friend
of mine asked, "Did the handkerchiefs contain texts from scripture? or
quotations from the Constitution of the United States?"

Emancipated slaves must quit North Carolina in ninety days after their
enfranchisement, on pain of being sold for life. 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 n