If he refuses to work the
road, or to pay or list the poll-tax, he may be indicted, fined,
and his labor sold to the highest bidder, precisely as in the old
slave-times, to discharge the fine and pay the tax and costs of
prosecution. There is a grim humor about all this which did not fail
to strike the colored man and induce him to remark its absurdity,
even when he did not formulate its actual character.
A thousand things tend to enhance this absurdity and seeming
oppression which the imagination of the thoughtful reader will
readily supply. One is the self evident advantage which this state
of things gives to the landowners. By it they are enabled to hold
large tracts of land, only a small portion of which is cultivated
or used in any manner. By refusing to sell on reasonable terms and
in small parcels, they compel the freedmen to accept the alternative
of enormous rents and oppressive terms, since starvation is the
only other that remains to them.
The men who framed these laws were experts in legislation and adepts
in political economy. It would perhaps be well for countries which
are to-day wrestling with the question: "What shall we do with our
poor?" to consider what was the answer the South made to this same
inquiry. There were four millions of people who owned no property.
They were not worth a dollar apiece. Of lands, tenements and
hereditaments they had none.
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