Slave Codes
The territorial slave code was enacted in 1804, a year after the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, under which slaves were banned from the use of firearms, participation in unlawful assemblies, or selling alcohol to other slaves. It also severely punished slaves for participating in riots, insurrections, or offering resistance to their masters. It also provided for the mutilation of slaves for sexual assault upon a white woman; a white man who sexually assaulted a slave woman was charged with trespassing upon her owner's property. The code was retained by the State Constitution of 1820.
An 1825 law, passed by the Missouri State Legislature, declared Blacks as incompetent as witnesses in cases which involved Whites, and testimonies by black witnesses were automatically considered invalid.
In 1847, an ordinance banning the education of Blacks and mulattoes was enacted. Anyone caught teaching a black or mulatto person, slave or free, was to be fined $500 and serve six months in jail.
Read more about this topic: History Of Slavery In Missouri
Famous quotes containing the words slave and/or codes:
“No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be an abstract of the common conscience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)