m more bitter and degrading than slavery had been, and violated
the most sacred of the inherent rights of human nature.

The civilized state of Alabama, which is now preparing to disfranchise
the Negro, declared that "stubborn and refractory servants, and servants
who loiter away their time," were to be treated as vagrants, fined fifty
dollars and "in default of payment might be hired out at public auction
for a period of six months."[2] Thus the Thirteenth Amendment did not
destroy the auction block.

Florida declared that "it shall not be lawful for any Negro or person of
color to own, use, or keep any bowie knife, dirk, sword or fire arms or
ammunition of any kind" without license, to be granted only upon the
recommendation of two "respectable" white men. For violating this law
the Negro was to stand in the pillory for one hour and then be whipped
with thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.[3] South Carolina, always bold
to reveal its purpose, declared that "no person of color shall pursue
the practice, art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic, shopkeeper
or any other employment besides that of husbandry or that of a servant
under contract for labor"[4] without a license, which was good for one
year only; and she supplemented this with the following:

"That a person of color, who is in the employment of a master
engaged in husbandry, shall not have the license to sell any corn,
rice, peas, wheat or other grain, any flour, cotton, fodder, hay,
bacon, fresh meat of any kind or any other product of a farm,
without written permission of such master."[5]

Louisiana, which has recently outlawed the Negro by Constitutional
enactment, declared:

"Every adult freedman or woman shall furnish themselves with a
comfortable home and visible means of support _within twenty days_
after the passage of this act!"[6]

Failing to do so, such persons were to be hired out at public auction
for the rest of the year.

Let it be borne in mind that these laws were not enactments of a distant
and forgotten past. They were the deliberate enactments of that period
for the purpose of nullifying the Thirteenth Amendment.

Of this period Mr. Justice Miller in rendering the decision in the
Slaughter House Cases said:

"The process of restoring to their proper relations with the
Federal Government and with the other states those which had sided
with the rebellion, undertaken under