Though its sumptuary clauses, along with
various others, were from first to last of no effect, the statute as a
whole so commended itself to the thought of slaveholding communities that
in 1770 Georgia made it the groundwork of her own slave police; Florida in
turn, by acts of 1822 and 1828, adopted the substance of the Georgia law
as revised to that period; and in lesser degree still other states gave
evidence of the same influence. Complementary legislation in all these
jurisdictions meanwhile recognized slaves as property, usually of chattel
character and with children always following the mother's condition,
debarred negro testimony in court in all cases where white persons were
involved, and declared the juridical incapacity of slaves in general except
when they were suing for freedom. Contemporaneously and by similar methods,
a parallel chain of laws, largely analogous to those here noted, was
extended from Virginia, herself a pioneer in slave legislation, to
Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina and in a fan-spread to the west as
far as Missouri and Texas.[4]
[Footnote 4: The beginning of Virginia's pioneer slave code has been
sketched in chapter IV above; and the slave legislation of the Northern
colonies and states in chapters VI and VII.
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