The postwar
black codes, 1865-66
Coming to grips with emancipation: the courts confront apprenticeship laws In Matter of Ambrose – North Carolina, 1867 (61 N.C. 91); Beard v. Hudson – North Carolina, 1867 (61 N.C. 180)
“I know it is difficult to get out of a net, to change ideas after you are fifty or sixty years old … .but they have no right to force us younger people, who have new ideas and are to live under a new system, to hold their exploded views. … They must not expect me to go the gait they paced fifty years ago; they must not expect the Eastern Shore [of Maryland] like a province of China, where men do the same things father and son, for a thousand years.” – Judge Hugh L. Bond (1867)
Coming to grips with emancipation: resistance to social equality State v. Hairston – North Carolina, 1869 (63 N.C. 451)
“[We oppose] all other measures intended or calculated to equalize or amalgamate the negro race with the white race, politically or socially … and … any and every measure designed or having the effect to promote the equality of the negro with the white man in any of the relations of life.” – Delaware Legislature (1873) (responding to Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner’s proposed federal law prohibiting segregation in public places) “[The proposed law] will arrest the enlightenment of the colored population (in whose improvement the people of Virginia feel a lively interest) … counteract the pacification and development now happily progressing … [and] reopen wounds now almost healed.” – Virginia Legislature (1874) (responding to Sumner’s proposed law) | Freedmen receiving assistance, Richmond, Virginia (1866) - courtesy Library of Congress Freedmen near New Bern, North Carolina (1863) - courtesy Library of Congress “It is a clear dictate of justice that no man shall be deprived of his rights or person or property, without the privilege of being heard; … there can be no case where notice can be dispensed with, and the actual presence of the person ought only to be dispensed with where he has intelligent friends present who can see that his interests are properly guarded.” – Justice Edwin Reade, in Ambrose “It is best that the colored populations should be satisfied that they are liable to no unlawful impressments, and that they should see that what is required of them has the sanction of the law. It may then be hoped that they will be contented, and will cheerfully submit to what they might otherwise mischievously resist.” – Justice __, in Beard[It] is gratifying to know that the [miscegenation] law has the sanction of both races. It is no discrimination in favor of one race against the other, but applies equally to both … neither the Civil Rights Bill, nor our state constitution was intended to enforce social equality, but only civil and political rights.” – Justice __, in Hairston
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EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 3. OLD SOUTH LEGAL HISTORY > 3.4 The Old South: Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877) > 3.4.1 The Old South (1861-1877): Law and War >