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in other cases they were considered free at twenty-
one; if a free Negro wished to vote, the privilege
was sometimes granted. Thus definite laws were due
Just about the time manhood suffrage in Maryland and
Virginia was changed to freehold suffrage.                                                         
Between 1664 and 1682 the tobacco planters,
so sorely troubled about prices and unpayable debts, 
in England that they actually pulled up their crops 
over wide areas, enacted the first slave codes of 
Southern history, the South Carolinians having adopted 
the practices of Barbados. The Negro servant now became 
a slave for life; Negro children were the property of the 
owners of their mothers; a slave was forbidden to own or 
bear arms of any kind; there could be no assemblies or 
public speaking of Negroes at any time; no black person 
might leave his master's plantation without a visa; if a 
slave struck a white person he was to receive forty lashes, 
no matter who was to blame; and if a master killed a slave 
it was not a crime, it not being assumed that masters would
 
 
1. Catterall, Mrs. Helen J.:
 Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro
gives all available court records on these subjects.