TÄTE IAVERY TATUTES - ProQuest

southern politics. Similarly, the Virginia Constitution of 1852 prohibited
manumission by the legislature and required that all slaves manumitted by their
owners leave the state within one year. This clause was designed to settle, once
and for all, the problem of free blacks in Virginia. Obviously constitutional
law cannot be separated from any scholarly examination of the legal history
of slavery.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this collection is its sheer volume,
over?,100 statutes.There is usually one general law, private act,or resolution
on slavery adopted by every legislative session or every state for virtually the
entire period from 1789 to 1865. Legislators probably passed more acts on
slavery than on any other subject. Equally important, these statutes show how
slavery affected virtually everything legislators did.
Indeed, these laws show that almost nothing could be created in the
antebellum South without taking slavery into consideration. A perusal of the
laws of Georgia, passed in the 1849-1850 legislative session reveal the wide variety
of legislation on slavery. An act for the incorporation of the town of Dalton,
Georgia contained a provision giving the mayor and council power "to pass
laws and ordinances for the control of slaves and free persons of color.. ." 6
An act of that same year to regulate the fees magistrates and constables re-
ceived naturally included provisions for presiding over the trials of slaves and
for the whipping of a slave. Under this law the constable received $1.35 for
every slave or free black he whipped "by sentence of Court." 7 Another act
provided for the payment of jurors who heard trials of slaves, while another
law required that sheriffs publish notices, of captured runaways in certain
newspapers. The mundane legislation of this particular session was balanced
by an act authorizing the governor to call a convention to protest the "ag-
gressive intolerance" of the "non- slaveholding States." 8
Except for the resolution touching national politics, the Georgia acts of
1849-1850 were hardly unusual. The Alabama laws of 1837 reveal similar at-
tention to slavery. A cursory examination of them reveals the extent to which
slavery intruded upon the legislative calendar.
A law of 1837 prohibited grave robbing or the use of bodies for medical
experimentation without the consent of the families. An exemption was made
so as not to prevent "any physician or student of medicine, from dissecting
the body of a slave with the consent of the owner." 9 Even in death slaves
might profit the masters and contribute to the overall welfare of the society.
Another act of that year required that liquor merchants swear an oath that
they "will not sell any spirituous liquors to any slave or slaves." 10 An act pro-
viding for a state census of 1838 naturally provided for separate totals for free
blacks, and for slaves. Whites were to be subdivided by age and gender; blacks
were not." An act incorporating the town of Gainesville rather redundantly
asserted that only "free white males above the age of twenty-one" could vote.
The same law empowered the new government to arrest "refractory slaves,"
to "restrain.. .disorderly or dangerous meetings of slaves, free Negroes, or
mulattoes," and to require that all male slaves and "other persons of color"
x State Slavery Statutes