Pointe Coupee Democrat. [volume] (False River [i.e. New Roads], Parish of Pointe Coupee [La.]) 1858-1862, 1860-01-14
THE DEMOCRAT.
P. A. ROY, Editor.
Negro Laws.


act new and severe laws against free
negroes of all classes, emmigrant or
resident In nearly every State the po-
lice laws against the introduction of free
negroes from other States have been
very recently strengthened, and in some
the design is meditated of excluding the
whole class, or permitting them to re-
main only~on condition that they go in
to state of slavery.
The necessity of vigilant watch
over this anomalous class of unfortu-
mates, is not to be questioned. They
live among us On sufferance-without
rights and without protectors, except in
the common instincts of humanity, and
the provident care which every bcnifi-
cent government owes to the humblest
and most helpless under it's sway.
In the Southern States, until very re-
Gently, they have enjoyed immunities
and been treated with indulgence. Not
great many years ago free negroes
voted in North Carolina, and at the first
election of Gen. jackson, in 1928, it was
alleged that the whole majority in one
of the precincts of a tide water county,
we shall not say for which party, was
made up of negro votes. That anomaly
was corrected in the amended constitu-
ton subsequently, but the fact remains
That up to and after that period loyal
Southern constituency felt no uneasi-
ness at the presence among them of a
small free negro class, having political
rights. A similar political philosophy
has ruled that they are an inferior and
dependent race, but it is an outside ag
gressive pressure that has driven the
South into treating them as aliens
among us, to be kept under perpetual
and rigorous surveillance, or to be thrust
away from US as elements in society too
dangerous, or too troublesome to be tol-
Grated.
Oficious philanthropy and partisan
recklessness meddling with the slave
question in the North, counseling inva-
sion and instruction, and lastly, canon
izing as saints the ruffian leaders of
bloody foray, have had the inevitable
consequence of constraining the South
to legislate sternly for wide and deep
separation between the servile popula-
tion and all the instrumentalities through
which disturbers of peace might reach
them with indictments to crime. The
negro, by hard necessity, which his
professed friends have made inevitable,
suffers in the contractions, within mar
rover and narrower limits, of all his
ancient privileges; in the harsher sur
veillance which is established over every
movement; and in the menace which is
made, i'll various quarters, to drive him
entirely out, and force him to seek a
refuge in the cold regions, where all of
his kind who have ever reached there,
wither away and perish in abandonment
and want. The very States which are
most clamorous for the freedom of the
Southern negro, pass the most unre-
lenting laws TO exclude him from their
borders, and the fercest fanatic who
Eliminates in the North his dogmas of
negro equality as the Bible doctrine for
Christians and the political faith to live
and die by, in spite Of human laws and
constitutions, has never taken into his
thoughts the problem how the slave lib
Grated, or the free negro exiled by his
means, is to be saved from houseless-
ness, hunger and misery, in that inhos-
pitable cline, where his kind find their
sole resting place in some pauper grave
yard. .
For SO much of all this wretchedness
as may fall on the negro, driven from
the place which charity allowed him
here, upon whose conscience does the
responsibility lie ? On ours, who have
entertained him as dependent indulgent.
ly here, Or theirs, whose cruel folly will
have forced him from the asylum we al
lowed, and who leave him to starve on
the door-sill, while they chaunt hymns
Of glorifcation to themselves for being
the chosen apostles of philanthropy.
But the South,in dealing with this un
happy race, ought not to treat them in a
vindictive spirit. We are to stand be
tween them and the tender mercies" ol
| abolitionism, and to save what remnant
we can from the total destitution and
speedy extinction to which an exodus
into the free States would doom them.
| The law of sclfpreservation demands
rigid police on all residents; and stern
exclusion of all immigrants. This is the
universal necessity in which there are
no degrees of expediency. The only al
lowable exception might be, in CONNER
cial ports, where the municipal authori
| ties have the means aud the authority
to maintain a rigid separation between
the colored sailors and the slave blacks
but even this exception is not favored
by some new laws.
The further policy which seems to fin'
favor in the legislatures of other State
Of the total abrogation Of the right Q
i roaidancn hxr fraa nacraoa 1u;thin Ii,