Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/82

68 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 store keeper 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 everywhere 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 colored persons under sixty and over sixteen years of age from the State, within ninety days, unless they could prove good characters, and obtain from the court a certificate of the same, for which they paid three dollars; these certificates might be revoked at the discretion of the county courts. If such persons do not quit the State within the time specified, or if they return to it, they may be sold for a term not exceeding five years.

In Tennessee, slaves are not allowed to be emancipated unless they leave the State forthwith. Any free colored person emigrating into this State, is fined from ten to fifty dollars, and hard labor in the penitentiary from one to two years.

North Carolina has made a law subjecting any vessel