If the apprentice ran away, the master might pursue him and bring him before a justice of the peace who could remand him to the service of his master. If the apprentice refused to return, he might be put into jail until the next term of the court, when his case would be investigated. If it was found that he left without cause, he could be punished like a hired freedman; but if he had a good cause, the court might discharge him and enter judgment against his master for not over one hundred dollars to be paid to the apprentice. Anyone enticing an apprentice away from his master, knowingly employing him, furnishing him food or clothing, or giving or selling him liquor without the master’s consent was guilty of a high misdemeanor.
If the master wished to get rid of the apprentice, he might go before the probate court, which could cancel his bond, and re-apprentice the minor. If the master died, the court in re-apprenticing would give preference to the widow or other member of the family of the deceased. If the master wished to move to another State and take his apprentice with him, he had to execute a bond conditioned upon his compliance with the apprentice laws of the State to which he was going. Any parent of a free Negro or mulatto might apprentice his minor child, and if the age could not be fixed by record testimony, the court fixed it.
The only race distinction made by North Carolina[109] was the law that no white child should be bound to a colored master or mistress, and this came in 1874—long after the period here considered.
The apprentice laws of South Carolina[110] which applied only to Negroes were almost as elaborate as those of Mississippi. A child over two years of age, born of a colored parent, might be bound as an apprentice to any respectable white or colored person; if a male, till he was twenty-one; if a female, till she was eighteen. Illegitimate children might be bound out by their mother. If the child had no parent in the district; or if his parents were paupers, or unable to support him, or were not teaching him the habits of industry and honesty, or were of a notoriously bad character or vagrants, or if either of them had been convicted of an infamous crime, he might be apprenticed by the district judge or by a magistrate. Males of twelve and females of ten had to sign the contract of apprenticeship and were bound thereby; but their refusal to sign would not affect the validity of the instrument. If the apprenticeship was voluntary, the contract had to be under seal, signed by the master, parent, and apprentice, attested by two credible witnesses, and approved by the district judge or magistrate. One copy of the contract was kept by the master, another, filed in the office of the clerk of court. The master had to pay three dollars for the approval of the contract by the district judge or magistrate.