granted them.[8] In the first year, the Law Company transported from Africa one thousand slaves, in 1720 five hundred, the same number the next March, and by 1721 the pages of legal enactments in the West Indies were being ransacked for precedents in dealing with this strange population.  But of all these slaves who came to the colony by June, 1721, but six hundred remained.  Many had died, some had been exported.  In 1722, therefore, the Mississippi Company was under constraint to pass an edict prohibiting the inhabitants of Louisiana from selling their slaves for transportation out of the colony, to the Spaniards, or to any other foreign nation under the penalty of the fine of a thousand livres and the confiscation of the Negroes.[9]

But already the curse of slavery had begun to show its effects.  The new colony was not immoral; it may best be described as unmoral.  Indolence on the part of the masters was physical, mental and moral.  The slave population began to lighten in color, and increase out of all proportion to the importation and natural breeding among themselves.  La Harpe comments in 1724 upon the astonishing diminution of the white population and the astounding increase of the colored population.[10] Something was undoubtedly wrong, according to the Caucasian standard, and it has remained wrong to our own day.[11] The person of color was now, in Louisiana, a part of its social system, a creature to be legislated for and against, a person lending his dark shade to temper the inartistic complexion of his white master.  Now he began to make history, and just as the trail of his color persisted in the complexion of Louisiana, so the trail of his personal influence continued in the history of the colony, the territory and the State.

Bienville, the man of far-reaching vision, saw the danger menacing the colony, and before his recall and disgrace before the French court, he published, in 1724, the famous Black Code.[12] This code followed the order of that of the West Indies but contains some provisions to meet local needs.  The legal status of the slave was that of movable property of his master.  Children born of Negro parents followed the condition of their mother.  Slaves were forbidden to carry weapons.  Slaves of different masters could not assemble in crowds by day or night.  They were not permitted to sell “commodities, provisions, or produce” without permission from their masters, and had no property which did not belong to their masters.  Neither free-born blacks nor slaves were allowed to receive gifts from whites.  They could not exercise such public functions as arbitrator or expert, could not be partners to civil or criminal suits, could not give testimony except in default of white people, and could never testify against their masters.  If a slave struck his master or one of the family so as to produce a bruise or shedding blood in the face, he had to be put to death.  Any runaway slave who continued to be so from the day his master