[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.]
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.]
[Footnote 2: Coffin, _Slave Insurrections_, p. 22.]
[Footnote 3: Walker mentioned "our wretchedness in consequence of slavery, our wretchedness in consequence of ignorance, our wretchedness in consequence of the preachers of the religion of Jesus Christ, and our wretchedness in consequence of the colonization plan." See _Walker's Appeal_.]
[Footnote 4: Acts passed at the Ninth Session of the Legislature of Louisiana, p. 96.]
Yielding to the demand of slaveholders, Georgia passed a year later a law providing that any Negro who should teach another to read or write should be punished by fine and whipping. If a white person should so offend, he should be punished with a fine not exceeding $500 and with imprisonment in the common jail at the discretion of the committing magistrate.[1]