race-malice of the whites, that followed them like the fleet-footed “Furies.”  There were special regulations for free Negroes.  The Act of 1703, forbidding slaves from being out at night after the hour of nine o’clock, extended to free Negroes.[335] In 1707 an Act was passed “regulating of free negroes."[336] It recites that “free negroes and mulattos, able of body, and fit for labor, who are not charged with trainings, watches, and other services,"[337] shall perform service equivalent to militia training.  They were under the charge of the officer in command of the military company belonging to the district where they resided.  They did fatigue-duty.  And the only time, that, by law, the Negro was admitted to the trainings, was between 1652 and 1656.  But there is no evidence that the Negroes took advantage of the law.  Public sentiment is more potent than law.  In May, 1656, the law of 1652, admitting Negroes to the trainings, was repealed.

“For the better ordering and settling of severall cases in the military companyes within this jurisdiction, which, upon experience, are found either wanting or inconvenient, it is ordered and declared by this Court and the authoritie thereof, that henceforth no negroes or Indians, although servants to the English, shal be armed or permitted to trayne, and y’t no other person shall be exempted from trayning but such as some law doth priveledge."[338]

And Gov.  Bradstreet, in his report to the “Committee for Trade,” made in May, 1680, says,—­

“We account all generally from Sixteen to Sixty that are healthfull and strong bodys, both House-holders and Servants fit to beare Armes, except Negroes and slaves, whom wee arme not."[339]

The law of 1707—­which is the merest copy of the Virginia law on the same subject—­requires free Negroes to answer fire-alarms with the company belonging to their respective precincts.  They were not allowed to entertain slave friends at their houses, without the permission of the owner of the slaves.  To all prohibitions there was affixed severe fines in large sums of money.  In case of a failure to pay these fines, the delinquent was sent to the House of Correction; where, under severe discipline, he was constrained to work out his fine at the rate of one shilling per day!  If a Negro “presume to smite or strike any person of the English, or other Christian nation,” he was publicly flogged by the justice before whom tried, at the discretion of that officer.

During this period the social condition of the Negroes, bond and free, was very deplorable.  The early records of the town of Boston preserve the fact that one Thomas Deane, in the year 1661, was prohibited from employing a Negro in the manufacture of hoops, under a penalty of twenty shillings; for what reason is not stated.[340] No churches or schools, no books or teachers, they were left to the gloom and vain imaginations of their own fettered intellects.