ls, but
those of working age were not to be sold in execution of debt apart from
the lands on which they worked, and neither husbands and wives nor mothers
and young children were to be sold into separate ownership under any
circumstances. All slaves, furthermore, were to be baptized into the
Catholic church, and were to be exempt from field work on Sundays and
holidays; and their marriages were to be legally recognized. Children,
of course, were to follow the status and ownership of their mothers.
All slaves were to be adequately clothed and fed, under penalty of
confiscation, and the superannuated were to be maintained on the same
basis as the able-bodied. Slaves might make business contracts under their
masters' approval, but could not sue or be sued or give evidence against
whites, except in cases of necessity and where the white testimony was in
default. They might acquire property legally recognized as their own when
their masters expressly permitted them to work or trade on their personal
accounts, though not otherwise. Manumission was restricted only by the
requirement of court approval; and slaves employed by their masters in
tutorial capacity were declared _ipso facto_ free. In police regards, the
travel and assemblage of slaves were restrained, and no one was allowed to
trade with them without their masters' leave; slaves were forbidden to have
weapons except when commissioned by their masters to hunt; fugitives were
made liable to severe punishments, and free negroes likewise for harboring
them. Negroes whether slave or free, however, were to be tried by the same
courts and by the same procedure as white persons; and though masters were
authorized to apply shackles and lashes for disciplinary purpose, the
killing of slaves by them was declared criminal even to the degree of
murder.[5]

[Footnote 5: This decree is printed in _Le Code Noir_ (Paris, 1742), pp.
318-358, and in the Louisiana Historical Society _Collections_, IV, 75-90.
The prior decree of 1685 establishing a slave code for the French West
Indies, upon which this for Louisiana was modeled, may be consulted in
L. Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Francaises_ (Paris, 1897), pp.
158-166.]

Nearly all the provisions of this relatively liberal code were adopted
afresh when Louisiana became a territory and then a state of the Union. In
assimilation to Anglo-American practice, however, such recognition as had
been given to slave _peculium_ was now wit