CHAPTER IV

terms, ranging from five to seven years. These were the laws in practically all of the States with slight differences. But they applied to whites only. The negro slave criminal had a superior standing in law, for the simple reason that while the whites were "free" labor, negroes were property, and, of course, it did not pay to send slaves to prison. In Maryland and in most Southern States, where the slaveholders were both makers and executors of law, the slaves need have no fear of prison. "The slaves, as we have seen before, are not subject to the Penal Code of the whites; they are hardly ever sent to prison. Slaves who commit grave crimes are hung; those who commit heinous crimes not punishable with death are sold out of the State. In selling him care is taken that his character and former life are not known, because it would lessen his price." Thus wrote De Beaumont and De Tocqueville; and in so writing they handed down a fine insight into the methods of that Southern propertied class which assumed so exalted an opinion of its honor and chivalry.