Under this head are to be comprised all those disabilities which attach to free colored persons by the laws of the several states.
1. The most extensive and universal disability (by many, however, considered a privilege) regards the militia. The laws of the several states relating to the militia, being founded upon the militia system adopted by the United States, provide for the exemption of colored persons from that service. With this exception the laws of many of the states recognise no distinctions of color.
2. The right of suffrage is confined to whites in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. In these states express provisions of their constitutions confine the right of suffrage to the whites. In the ten remaining states no constitutional restrictions of the kind appear to have been imposed upon free colored persons. Yet, it is believed, that the statute laws of North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, impose similar restrictions. In most of the remaining states, it is probable that the right of suffrage is rarely, if ever, exercised by this class of citizens, although no law may exist which disfranchises them. The burdens of taxation are, so far as known, imposed without the discrimination which prevails in regard to the right of suffrage. In Philadelphia, and perhaps in other places in Pennsylvania, no personal tax is imposed, the payment of such a tax being necessary to qualify for the right of suffrage.
3. In many of the States free colored persons are excluded by law from the privilege of holding office; and where this is not the case, the presumption is that in those states where they are not allowed to vote, they would not be allowed to govern. It is not known that any such person has ever been elected to office, even in those states where the right of suffrage is extended to them.
4. In a few of the states only, are there any laws expressly forbidding intermarriage between the blacks and the whites.
5. Free persons of color are, in most of the states, allowed to purchase and hold property, real and personal, and mixed, and are entitled to the same protection in its enjoyment, and the same redress for injuries to it or to their persons, as the white citizens. In some states, however, the tenure of their property is very insecure without a white guardian, as they are not allowed to testify against the whites, or in cases where a white man is party.