History of the United States I / Unit 12 USH1 1685 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Upper South Laws Were Harsher
The idea
Southern states made manumission increasingly illegal and stripped free Black people of rights, forbidding them to testify against White people in court or to seek employment freely. Virginia required free Black people to leave the state. And the anchor records a fact that runs against intuition: upper South laws were harsher than those of the Deep South.
In practice
The freest region of the slave South legislating hardest against people who were already free.
Where people slip
Historians attribute the difference to economics. Slavery in the Deep South was strong and profitable, so a free Black population was an irritant. In the upper South slavery was economically uncertain, tobacco was giving way to wheat, and the free Black population was growing, so insecurity expressed itself as restriction. Where an institution feels secure it tolerates exceptions. Where it feels threatened it legislates.
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