[Footnote 1:  Hodgson, Whitney’s Remarks during a Journey through North America, p. 184.]

In consequence of this tendency, State after State enacted more stringent laws to control the situation.  Missouri passed in 1817 an act so to regulate the traveling and assembly of slaves as to make them ineffective in making headway against the white people by insurrection.  Of course, in so doing the reactionaries deprived them of the opportunities of helpful associations and of attending schools.[1] By 1819 much dissatisfaction had arisen from the seeming danger of the various colored schools in Virginia.  The General Assembly, therefore, passed a law providing that there should be no more assemblages of slaves, or free Negroes, or mulattoes, mixing or associating with such slaves for teaching them reading and writing.[2] The opposition here seemed to be for the reasons that Negroes were being generally enlightened in the towns of the State and that white persons as teachers in these institutions were largely instrumental in accomplishing this result.  Mississippi even as a Territory had tried to meet the problem of unlawful assemblies.  In the year 1823 it was declared unlawful for Negroes above the number of five to meet for educational purposes.[3] Only with the permission of their masters could slaves attend religious worship conducted by a recognized white minister or attended by “two discreet and reputable persons."[4]

[Footnote 1:  Laws of Missouri Territory, etc., p. 498.]

[Footnote 2:  Tate, Digest of the Laws of Virginia, pp. 849-850.]

[Footnote 3:  Poindexter, Revised Code of the Laws of Mississippi, p. 390.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid., p. 390.]

The problem in Louisiana was first to keep out intelligent persons who might so inform the slaves as to cause them to rise.  Accordingly in 1814[1] the State passed a law prohibiting the immigration of free persons of color into that commonwealth.  This precaution, however, was not deemed sufficient after the insurrectionary Negroes of New Berne, Tarborough, and Hillsborough, North Carolina,[2] had risen, and David Walker of Massachusetts had published to the slaves his fiery appeal to arms.[3] In 1830, therefore, Louisiana enacted another measure, providing that whoever should write, print, publish, or distribute anything having the tendency to produce discontent among the slaves, should on conviction thereof be imprisoned at hard labor for life or suffer death at the discretion of the court.  It was provided, too, that whoever used any language or became instrumental in bringing into the State any paper, book, or pamphlet inducing this discontent should suffer practically the same penalty.  All persons who should teach, or permit or cause to be taught, any slave to read or write, should be imprisoned not less than one month nor more than twelve.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Bullard and Curry, A New Digest of the Statute Laws of the State of Louisiana, p. 161.]