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 RESTRICTIONS UPON MOVEMENT OF NEGROES

After 1865 there was comparatively little legislation as to the movement of Negroes from one State to another. It would have been utterly impossible to control the migration of the 4,000,000 Negroes then in the United States. In States where the free Negroes were numbered by only hundreds or even thousands, the entrance or exit of one was a noticeable event. Where, however, Negroes were in the majority, a hundred might have come or gone at once without being noticed. The Constitution of Georgia[19] of 1865 empowered the general assembly to make laws for the regulation or prohibition of the immigration of free persons of color into that State from other places; but the legislature seems not to have used this power.

Two years earlier, in 1863, the legislature of Kentucky[20] had declared that it was unlawful for any Negro or mulatto claiming to be free under the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, or under any other proclamation by the Government of the United States, to migrate to or remain in the State. Any Negro violating this law was treated as a runaway slave.

A law of South Carolina,[21] of 1865, provided that no person of color should migrate to or reside in the State unless, within twenty days after his arrival, he entered into a bond with two freeholders as sureties in a penalty of one thousand dollars, conditioned on his good behavior and for his support if he should become unable to support himself. If he should fail to execute the required bond, he had to leave the State within ten days, or be liable to corporal punishment. If, after being so punished, he