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The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (both free and freedmen).In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact ...
The United States experienced divisions between slave states in the South and free states in the North. At the start of the American Civil War in 1861, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states, all of which had slave codes. The 19 free states did not have slave codes, although they still had laws regarding ...
The Southern states initially enacted Black Codes in an attempt to maintain control over black labor. The Mississippi Black Code (the first to pass and the best known) distinguished between "free negroes" (referring to those who had been free before the war, in some places called "Old Issues"), (newly free) "freedmen", and " mulattoes ...
The 1804 law required black and mulatto residents to have a certificate from the Clerk of the Court that they were free. Employers who violated were fined $10 to $50 split between informer and state. Under the 1807 law, black and mulatto residents required a $500 bond for good behavior and against becoming a township charge.
As the West was developed for settlement, the Southern states wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states, in order to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises.
As the population of the free states began to outstrip the population of the slave states, leading to control of the House of Representatives by free states, the Senate became the preoccupation of slave-state politicians interested in maintaining a congressional veto over federal policy with regard to slavery and other issues important to the ...
The Slave Trade Act of 1800 was a law passed by the United States Congress to build upon the Slave Trade Act of 1794, limiting American involvement in the trade of human cargo. It was signed into law by President John Adams on May 10, 1800. This was among several acts of Congress that eventually outlawed the importation of slaves to the United ...
A total of 74 cases of slaving were brought in the United States between 1837 and 1860, "but few captains had been convicted, and those had received trifling sentences, which they had usually been able to avoid". [21] Nathaniel Gordon, who was hanged in 1862, was the only person to be executed for illegal slave-trading in the United States. [21]