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 SLAVE MARRIAGES DECLARED LEGAL BY STATUTE

The last of the three methods of reconstructing the domestic relations of former slaves was by declaring slave marriages legal by statute. On September 29, 1866, the Constitutional Convention of Alabama, which adopted an ordinance prohibiting slavery, also enacted[19] that all marriages between freedmen and freedwomen, whether during slavery or after, solemnized by one having or claiming to have the authority, should be valid, if the parties were still living together. It was subsequently held that, under this act, the woman had a right of dower, although the man had abandoned her and married another woman within a month after such act was passed.[20] In 1870, the Supreme Court of the State held that the children of slave marriages were not bastards, that by the elevation of their parents to citizenship, their heritable blood was restored.[21]

Arkansas,[22] in 1866, legalized marriages of all persons of color who then lived together as husband and wife and made their children legitimate, but provided that thereafter all marriages of persons of color must be recorded. The same year Tennessee[23] passed a similar statute.

The Constitution[24] of Texas of 1869 declared that all persons should be considered legally married who in slavery lived as husband and wife and after Emancipation either continued to live together till one died or were living together at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. Such a marriage completed by cohabitation after Emancipation was valid, though the parties separated within five months and were not living together at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.[25]