James Redpath, The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States.

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[14] took out a warrant, had the market woman brought before the mayor, and swore positively, as did his son also, that she had used insolent and abusive language to him. She would have been whipped, as usual, and had her sentence chronicled in the papers as the punishment of a “worthless free negro,” if several white persons, who were present at the time and knew her to be an honest inoffensive soul, had not promptly stepped up and swore that she was innocent of the offence charged by the plaintiff. She was therefore discharged; but the cowardly perjurers were not even reprimanded.

2. Although free men of color pay the same municipal taxes levied on white citizens, they are not only prohibited from exercising any influence in elections, but from entering the public square or the white man's cemetery.

3. They are prohibited from carrying any offensive or defensive weapons.

4. They are not allowed to go abroad after sunset, without a written permit from their owners or carrying their papers of freedom.

5. If they violate these regulations they are imprisoned until claimed by their masters, if slaves, or visited and liberated by their friends, if free. If they are free but without friends to attend to their interests — hear this and defend it if ye can, ye “Northern men with Southern principles” --they are kept in jail for a certain time, and then--God help them — they are sold into slavery to pay the expenses incurred by the city by keeping them incarcerated. Not many years ago, free girl from the opposite side of the river, incautiously entered the city of Richmond without her certificate of freedom. She was arrested,