1852 Slave Code

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archives.alabama.gov/cornerstone/slavecode1852/title_page.html

An interesting read.

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From Bibb County Alabama: The First Hundred Years 1818 - 1918, by Rhoda Coleman Ellison

Whether he was employed on his owner's or some lessor's property, life of the slave was governed by numerous legal restrictions. These laws reflect the growing apprehensions of the master and the increasing value of the slave in a cotton economy. The master's apprehensions are understandable in the light of contemporary newspaper warnings, especially those concerning bandits called "Murrelites." "Look out for Murrel men!" the Cahaba Southern Democrat was exclaiming as early as February 3, 1838. John Murrell was a notorious outlaw whose gang stole slaves and horses, resold them, and then stole them again, sharing the profits with the slaves in return for their cooperation. After his arrest in Tennessee in 1834, he was the subject of a book entitled A History of the Detection, Conviction, Life and Designs of John A. Murel, the Great Western Land Pirate, together with His System of Villainy, and Plan for Exciting a Negro Rebellion, . . . , written by Augustus Q. Walton, Cincinnati, and published by Harper and Brothers, New York, 1836. Because of the activities of Murrel and his gang, his name was given to any group suspected of stealing slaves. The Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor in the fall of 1857 frightened Bibb slaveowners with the latest rumor:

MURRELITES IN BIBB COUNTY By a private letter received, we learn that a gang of men have been discovered in the eastern part of Bibb and west in Autauga, supposed to be organized upon the Murrel plan, and who have been engaged for the last year in tampering with and running off negroes, stealing horses and committing other depredations.

As a result of the growing concern, state laws aimed at protecting the master from the loss of his property became more stringent through the years until they were summarized in the Alabama Slave Code of 1852.The code enumerates many actions forbidden the slave unless he obtained his master's permission, usually required in writing. For example, he was not permitted to enter into any kind of contract. The courts upheld this law in the case of a slave residing near Maplesville, then in Bibb County. Dick, a shoemaker, the property of John Herrington, had lived as a free man following his master's death in the early 1850s. After two white men borrowed $220 from Dick and gave him a promissory note for the amount, Dick's white "adviser," named Davis (probably David E. Davis, a Maplesville lawyer), lost a suit to compel repayment. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Dick had no legal right to enter into such an agreement. Also a slave could not own any property or under any pretense keep a dog, unless in a case of necessity his master paid a five-dollar tax. If he sold liquor, not only he but the white man who bought it from him were liable, as Philip Shuttlesworth learned when the Alabama Supreme Court upheld his conviction in Bibb County circuit court for receiving quart a of whiskey without the slave's master's permission.

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Among other laws, a slave was forbidden to go beyond the limits of his master's land without his pass or to furnish one to a fellow bondman. Punishment for the first act was set at not more than twenty stripes at the discretion of the justice or ten lashes on the bare back at the order of the owner or overseer, but for the second act the severest punishment was prescribed: a hundred lashes on the bare back. A slave was not legally allowed to assemble with more than four other males off the plantation unattended by his master, nor speak or preach to a group of slaves without the presence of five slaveholders, a law whose violation "must" be punished with thirty-nine lashes on the first offense and fifty on the second, "inflicted by any officer of a patrol company or by order of the justice of peace." Traditionally, the local patrol company, sometimes referred to by blacks as the "patty role", was the most feared law enforcement agency.

It is impossible to know now how strictly such rules were enforced by slaveholders, but some restrictions were clearly violated or circumvented, such as the law against teaching a slave to read, enacted by the state legislature in 1832. This law forbade attempting to teach any slave or "free person of color" to spell, read, or write "upon penalty of from $250 to $500." House servants were more likely to be indulged in this respect than were the field hands. One such case is that of Araminta Davidson, grandmother of Bibb's black educator Henry Davidson, who was taught to spell and read by one of the daughters of her mistress, Mrs. S. W. Davidson

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Also it is difficult to learn now what the slaves in Bibb thought of their life under these laws and other conditions of their bondage. The oral traditions that have been handed down to their descendants are too far removed from the source to be very illuminating. Yet many are confirmed by earlier records from survivors of the antebellum period elsewhere in the state.

Jack Clark of Brent is the grandson of a slave, Richard Hill, who was raised on a plantation near Harrisburg, probably the Robert Hill place because he took the surname Hill after emancipation. A few years ago, when he permitted some of his family traditions to be recorded, Clark said: "I don't think my grandfather ever married in slavery but he had children. He had my father, who was born in slavery. My grandfather was still under another slave master, and so they sold my father, Charlie Clark, to another slave master." Jack Clark's memories agree with the records of black freedmen that the commonest punishment meted out to a slave was for his failure to "keep up on the row," as in "chopping" cotton. "I have heard the old parents talking," he said, "about how they would whip you if you didn't act right. They were so fought on you until they'd hold you almost up to the bossman, then turn you round half way down the field and you'd go back to the other bossman on the other end." He explained, "There would be two bossmen, one on one end and one on the other, twisting and dragging you with a rope."

According to other sources, the slow workman was chastised with his own hoe handle. Jack Clark's wife, Callie Clark, was told in her childhood of another cause for beating. "An old lady told me about slavery. Her name was Annie Rachel. She told me that they beat her and made her wade out in the water in the ponds to get calves and things together."She also told Callie Clark about the fear of the "patty role."





















 

[sloopjohnc]

What I don't get, sorta, is while slaves were a pretty hefty investment, their owners beat the crap out of them.

I don't beat the shit out of anything I own that would cost comparably the same.

Shows you how much fear and awareness slave owners had over owning other people.

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To balance somewhat these rather grim stories, more pleasant impressions are recorded in a few letters addressed after the war to a Bibb planter by some of his former slaves. Writing to Dr. E. H. Moren of Centreville, these freedmen demonstrate the kindly relationship that had evidently existed between them and their master. John Mickil, who had moved after emancipation to Holly Springs, Mississippi, wrote in this homesick strain: "I never feel like I am at home until I get to your house . . . when I come again I expect to stay as long as I live if agreeable with you. . . . Dr., you know you have always told me to be a good boy, & have cautioned me to keep out of bad company. So I have taken your advice as a very good thing for me & shall always think of it & Never forget you. . . . I am the same Boy that I was when I left you." Another former slave, Joseph Davidson, a preacher, corresponded regularly with Dr. Moren from his new home in Wilcox County until the doctor's death in 1886. On April 10, 1884, Davidson wrote: "I showed your letter to some of my white friends down here & they esteemed it much, & also many of my Colored ones and they give you the Praize as being my former owner. I said thats the way we do Business up home."