The black code

When modern historians talk about The Black Code, they usually mean the code developed at the end of the Civil War in reaction to Reconstruction.

The original Black Code, however, was older and was the foundation of rules regarding slavery much in the way the Ten Commandments became the foundation of Jewish and later Christian faith.

Legend has it that a Frenchman named Bienville wrote the 54 rules that make up The Black Code, covering a whole range of issues dealing with the relationship between whites and blacks.

Bienville was a soldier, so obviously felt the need of rule, but he was also a religious man, who also believed black people had souls and should be instructed in religious faith – in particular – the Catholic faith. A shrewd man, Bienville foresaw the conflicts between black and white, and though the product of his time, believe this code could help save black and white lives.

Despite popular misconceptions suggested by popular TV shows such as The Musketeers, the French as well as their English counterparts in colonial America had very little experience dealing with blacks – unlike the Spanish and Portuguese who had already encountered blacks in Africa, and had brought them to the west to long before Jamestown.

The Spanish in particular saw no need to restrict sexual relationships between blacks and whites – although were often crueler to slaves than the French and English were.

Bienville could not have foreseen how his code would some to serve as the rule book for slavery in the south, which would be adapted by the Spanish, English and eventually the American South as a kind of guide to slavery.

Most books on slavery do not mention him or his code, mostly because popular books today – even the infamous 1619 Project by The New York Times rely heavily on abolitionist history, and Bienville’s Black Code would not fit well into that narrative.

The 54 rules became the foundation of Southern relations with slaves, an ideal to which whites were supposed to inspire, although only a handful actually did.

Although Spanish had more contact with blacks, they were as terrified by them as the French and English were – although the white population fully understood they could not tame the wilderness without them.

The Carolinas as they got settled fully understood the kind of hardship, they were causing blacks but also the desperate need for slave labor when they instituted The Principle of Extreme Tyranny, which legalized slavery in those colonies.

Bienville’s Black Code was an attempt to limit the power of whites over blacks, but also created a system of punishments blacks could expect if they disobeyed their masters. Odious by contemporary standards – which are often raised by liberals when citing the south’s abuse of slaves – in truth, the punishments the Black Code imposed were little different from punishment being inflicted on whites elsewhere in the colonies, in particular, the Puritan New England.

The Black Code set rules for how slaves should be treated, how they should be punished, and how their masters should be held accountable for abusing slaves.

Bienville’s rules called for instructing slaves in religious faith, including allowing them to study the Bible – a right later stripped of the slaves when Northern Abolitionists started distributing anti-slavery literature in the south, calling for slave uprisings.

Because Bienville was a Roman Catholic, his rules limited or restricted slave labor on the Sabbath.

His rules strictly prohibited romantic relations between the races, banning marriages between black and whites – for which a slave owner could face fines as well as the loss the slave. No priest or religious leader was allowed to perform such ceremonies.

Even manumitted (freed slaves) were not allowed to have sex with a slave, and a free slave who did, was forced to marry the slave. Oddly enough, the slave then became a free slave, and so did all of the children that resulted from the union.

The Black Code was designed to protect free men – black, white or Native American – from slave violence – though the threat of reprisals.

The most frequent punishment was the whip though the severity of punishment increased with repeated offenses or the seriousness of the perceived crime.

A slave was whipped for a first offense and would likely get branded with a hot iron if he did the same thing again. Some punishments including chopping off a slave’s ears or even maiming him. While Abolitionists often ranted and raved about slaves being killed, the death penalty was rare – if only because the slave was too valuable.

If a slave struck his master, his master’s wife, mistress or children hard enough to leave a mark or draw blood, death was generally the result.

As in the old west, a slave who stole a horse or rustled a cow or sheep, was generally hung. Theft of other things resulted in harsh but not deadly punishment – usually a whipping or branding.

Slaves who ran away faced a variety of punishments that could including having his ears cut off and being branded. If he continued to run away, he could be maimed or eventually killed.

But these punishments were not exclusive to the south or to slaves, but were in fact the standard kinds of punishments inflicted on white or black in the colonies in the north or south – and in fact, the punishment inflicted on slaves tended to be less severe than punishments inflicted in England and France. And the punishments inflicted on black slaves shipped to Moslem countries involved loss of hands, feet, tongues, eyes and beheading.

While the whip was the most popular means of punishment in the north, white people there could be put into stocks or suffer that era’s version of water torture, they were often mutilated and branded, even hung – or in the case of suspected witch craft – burned alive. Most criminals in the north were whipped or banded for crimes that included breaking the sabbath, Idolatry, blasphemy, public drunkenness, fighting or even cursing.

Most often the punishment was done in public, designed to serve as a deterrent to others.

The punishments in Bienville’s Black Code pretty much fell in line with what was at the time the norm for criminal justice north and south during the 17th and into the 18th Centuries.

But The Black Code was more than just about crime and punishment.

Bienville sought to protect slaves from sadistic masters – though even he admitted his rules could not completely control passions. He also understood that the major motivation for obeying the rules might be only to keep valuable property from being damaged.

The Black Code established minimum requirements for the feeding, closing and housing of slaves, and gave the slave the right to file a complain with the attorney general of a village council who oversaw the enforcement of the code.

Masters were also required to feed; cloth and house injured slaves and provide this same care for elderly slaves or those too young to work.

This meant a master had to provide for slaves from birth to death or pay the local government to provide those services.

Each colony had an officer or justice who was empowered to charge the master or overseer if a slave was murdered or mutilated, and this officer would even sentence a master to death for the murder of a slave.

The Black Code also prohibited a master from selling a husband or wife separately if he owned both, and children under 14 could not be sold separately from their parents.

Freed or manumitted slaves were granted the same rights and privileges as other free born persons under this code.

The code also provided a means for slaves to buy their own freedom.

Although Bienville intended the Black Code to serve as a hard and fast rule, most masters used it as a guide, picking and choosing which rules they would honor and other ignore.

But over time, most southern slave owners operated independently of the code, and the fate of a slave depended largely on the good will of the master

While there were many good masters, the system grew harsher – especially under the constant drum beat of northern abolitionists. The attempted uprising by John Brown as well as other incidents instigated by abolitionist infiltrators caused a serious change in the south.

Most slaves were prohibited from learning to read or write, living conditions varied significantly. The vast number of southern abolitionists were driven out of the south, suspected of collaborating with their northern counter parts. The switch to cotton as a major export crop revigorated slavery at a time in the 1820s when it was about to fail. The collapse of the northern industrial economy in 1819 also caused the north to impose crippling tariffs on the south, forcing the south to increase its need to produce more cotton and thus increased the need for slaves.

But one has to wonder what the life of a slave might have been had the south mandated its rules rather than treated them as some vague ideal?

We will never know.