whipping slaves encountered at large without
passes or unless on the way to or from the distant homes of their wives,
and seizing any arms and any runaway slaves discovered.[14] The police code
of the neighboring parish of East Feliciana in 1859 went on further to
prescribe trials and penalties for slaves insulting or abusing white
persons, to restrict their carrying of guns, and their assemblage, to
forbid all slaves but wagoners to keep dogs, to restrict citizens in their
trading with slaves, to require the seizure of self-styled free negroes not
possessing certificates, and to prescribe that all negroes or mulattoes
found on the railroad without written permits be deemed runaway slaves and
dealt with as the law regarding such directed.[15]

[Footnote 14: _Police Regulations of the Parish of West Baton Rouge (La.),
passed at a regular meeting held at the Court House of said Parish on the
second and third days of June, A.D. 1828_ (Baton Rouge, 1828), pp. 8-11.
For a copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Professor W.L. Fleming of
Louisiana State University.]

[Footnote 15: D.B. Sanford, _Police Jury Code of the Parish of East
Feliciana, Louisiana_ (Clinton, La., 1859), pp. 98-101.]

In general, the letter of the law in slaveholding states at the middle of
the nineteenth century presumed all persons with a palpable strain of negro
blood to be slaves unless they could prove the contrary, and regarded the
possession of them by masters as presumptive evidence of legal ownership.
Property in slaves, though by some of the statutes assimilated to real
estate for certain technical purposes, was usually considered as of chattel
character. Its use and control, however, were hedged about with various
restraints and obligations. In some states masters were forbidden to
hire slaves to themselves or to leave them in any unusual way to their
self-direction; and everywhere they were required to maintain their slaves
in full sustenance whether young or old, able-bodied or incapacitated.
The manumission of the disabled was on grounds of public thrift nowhere
permitted unless accompanied with provision for their maintenance, and that
of slaves of all sorts was restricted in a great variety of ways. Generally
no consent by the slave was required in manumission, though in some
commonwealths he might lawfully reject freedom in the form bestowed.[16]
Masters might vest powers of agency in their slaves, but when so doing the
masters themselv