In Alabama, which might indeed serve as an example for the other rebellious States, "stubborn or refractory servants" and "servants who loiter away their time" were declared by law to be "vagrants," and might be brought before a justice of the peace and fined fifty dollars; and in default of payment they might be "hired out," on three days' notice by public outcry, for the period of "six months." No fair man could fail to see that the whole effect, and presumably the direct intent, of this law was to reduce the helpless negro to slavery for half the year--a punishment that could be repeated whenever desired, a punishment sure to be desired for that portion of each recurring year when his labor was specially valuable in connection with the cotton crop, while for the remainder of the time he might shift for himself.

By this detestable process the "master" had the labor of the "servant" for a mere pittance; and even that pittance did not go to the servant, but was paid into the treasury of the county, and thus relived the white men from their proper share of taxation.

There may have been more cruel laws enacted, but the statute-books of the world might be searched in vain for one of meaner injustice.
The foregoing process for restoring slavery in a modified form was applicable to men or women of any age.

But for "minors" a more speedy and more sweeping methods was contrived by the law-makers of Alabama, who had just given their assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

They made it the "duty of all sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other civil officers of the several counties," to report the "names of all minors under the age of eighteen years, whose parents have not the means or who refuse to support said minors," and thereupon it was made the duty of the Court to "apprentice said minor to some suitable person on such terms as the Court may direct." Then follows a suggestive _proviso_ directing that "if said minor be the child of a freedman" (as if any other class were really referred to!) "the _former owner_ of said minor shall have the preference;" and "the judge of probate shall make a record of all the proceedings," for which he should be entitled to a fee of one dollar in each case, to be paid, as this atrocious law directed, by "the master or mistress." To tighten the grasp of ownership on the minor who was now styled an apprentice, it was enacted in almost the precise phrase of the old slave-code that "whoever shall entice said apprentice from his master of mistress, or furnish food or clothing to him or her, without said consent, shall be fined in a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars." The ingenuity of the Alabama legislators in contriving schemes to re-enslave the negroes was not exhausted by the odious and comprehensive statutes already cited.