The law of North Carolina prohibits the “immoderate” correction of slaves.  If it has power to prohibit immoderate correction, it can prohibit moderate correction—­all correction, which would be virtual emancipation; for, take from the master the power to inflict pain, and he is master no longer.  Cease to ply the slave with the stimulus of fear; and he is free.

The Constitution of Mississippi gives the General Assembly power to make laws “to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity.”  The Constitution of Missouri has the same clause, and an additional one making it the DUTY of the legislature to pass such laws as may be necessary to secure the humane treatment of the slaves.  This grant to those legislatures, empowers them to decide what is and what is not “humane treatment.”  Otherwise it gives no “power”—­the clause is mere waste paper, and flouts in the face of a befooled legislature.  A clause giving power to require “humane treatment” covers all the particulars of such treatment—­gives power to exact it in all respects—­requiring certain acts, and prohibiting others—­maiming, branding, chaining together, separating families, floggings for learning the alphabet, for reading the Bible, for worshiping God according to conscience—­the legislature has power to specify each of these acts—­declare that it is not “humane treatment,” and PROHIBIT it.—­The legislature may also believe that driving men and women into the field, and forcing them to work without pay, is not “humane treatment,” and being Constitutionally bound “to oblige” masters to practise “humane treatment”—­they have the power to prohibit such treatment, and are bound to do it.

The law of Louisiana makes slaves real estate, prohibiting the holder, if he be also a land holder, to separate them from the soil.[A] If it has power to prohibit the sale without the soil, it can prohibit the sale with it; and if it can prohibit the sale as property, it can prohibit the holding as property.  Similar laws exist in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies.

[Footnote A:  Virginia made slaves real estate by a law passed in 1705. (Beverly’s Hist. of Va., p. 98.) I do not find the precise time when this law was repealed, probably when Virginia became the chief slave breeder for the cotton-growing and sugar-planting country, and made young men and women “from fifteen to twenty-five” the main staple production of the State.]

The law of Louisiana requires the master to give his slaves a certain amount of food and clothing.  If it can oblige the master to give the slave one thing, it can oblige him to give him another:  if food and clothing, then wages, liberty, his own body.