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 The same year, South Carolina[9] passed a statute of ninety-nine sections relative to persons of color, eleven of which concerned their marital relations. This statute established the relation of husband and wife between persons of color, and declared that those then living as such were husband and wife. If a man had two or more reputed wives or a woman two or more reputed husbands, he or she must choose one of them by April 1, 1866, and be remarried. Children born before the enactment of this law were declared to be the legitimate offspring of their mother, and of their putative father also if they were acknowledged by him. Thereafter, Negroes must be married as white people were—by a clergyman, judge, magistrate, or other judicial officer. The husband who abandoned his wife or the wife who abandoned her husband, might be bound out from year to year until he or she was willing to resume conjugal relations. An abandoned wife was free to make a contract for service. South Carolina has been apparently the only State to provide for the children of white fathers and Negro mothers. A law[10] of 1872 declared that such children might inherit from their father if he did not marry another woman but continued to live with their mother.

CERTIFICATES OF MARRIAGE

Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland provided for the marriage of former slaves by the second method enumerated above, the granting of certificates. The Kentucky law[11] declared that all colored persons who had been living together as husband and wife and who continued to do so should be regarded as legally married and their children