We have already observed that at the request of the Agricultural Convention of that State in 1852 the legislature all but passed a bill providing for the education of slaves to increase their efficiency and attach them to their masters.

In 1834 the legislature of Pennsylvania established a system of public schools, but the claims of the Negroes to public education were neither guaranteed nor denied.

In 1841 the New York legislature authorized any district, with the approbation of the school commissioners, to establish a separate school for the colored children in their locality.

The legislature then passed an act providing that no one should be denied admittance to any public school on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Petitions were sent to the legislature, and appeals were made to representatives asking for a repeal of those laws which permitted the segregation of the colored children in the public schools.

But intense as this agitation became, and urgently as it was put before the public, it failed to gain sufficient momentum to break down the barriers prior to 1866 when the legislature of Rhode Island passed an act abolishing separate schools for Negroes.

As such an agreement would have no standing at law the matter was recommended to the legislature of the State, which authorized the establishment in that commonwealth of several separate schools for persons of color.

The legislature then passed an act declaring that the schools of the State should be open to all persons alike between the ages of four and sixteen, and that no person should be denied instruction in any public school in his school district on account of race or color.

Following the opinion of Chandler, their solicitor, they based their action of making distinction in the public schools on the natural distinction of the races, which "no legislature, no social customs, can efface," and which "renders a promiscuous intermingling in the public schools disadvantageous both to them and to the whites."

The legislature of Massachusetts then enacted a law providing that in determining the qualifications of a scholar to be admitted to any public school no distinction should be made on account of the race, color, or religious opinion of the applicant.

But no help came from the cities and the State before 1849 when the legislature passed a law authorizing the establishment of schools for children of color at public expense.

In 1841 a petition was sent to the legislature requesting that a reasonable share of the school fund be appropriated to the education of Negroes, but the committee to which it was referred reported that legislation on that subject was inexpedient.

Then the legislature amended the law authorizing the establishment of schools in townships so as to provide that in all enumerations the children of color should not be taken, that the property of the blacks and mulattoes should not be taxed for school purposes, and that their children should not derive any benefit from the common schools of that State.

The State Legislature had sufficient moral courage to do away with these caste distinctions in 1874.

He organized the concern in shares, under an act of incorporation of the Legislature of New York, and began operations by establishing his central point of interior action at Michilimackinack.

The Virginia convention proposed, as an amendment, "that every freeman has a right to petition, or apply to the Legislature, for a redress of grievances."

Is not that the guide and rule of this legislature.

LUTHER MARTIN who was a prominent member of that body: [Footnote 9: Speech before the Legislature of Maryland in 1787.]

The very first Article of the Constitution takes slavery at once under its legislative protection, as a basis of representation in the popular branch of the National Legislature.

Every law of the legislature becomes a link in the chain of the slave; every executive act a rivet to his hapless fate; every judicial decision a perversion of the human intellect to the justification of wrong.

This is now your condition, under that delusive ambiguity of language and of principle, which begins by declaring the representation in the popular branch of the legislature a representation of persons, and then provides that one class of persons shall have neither part not lot in the choice of their representatives; but their elective franchise shall be transferred to their masters, and the oppressors shall represent the oppressed.

These statutes are not merely infamous outrages on every principle of justice and humanity, but are gross and palpable violations of the State constitution, and manifest an absence of moral sentiment in the Ohio legislature as deplorable as it is alarming.

The legislature well knew that it would generally be utterly impossible for a stranger, and especially a black stranger, to find such sureties.

On the 14th January, 1839, a petition for relief from certain legal disabilities, from colored inhabitants of Ohio, was presented to the popular branch of the legislature, and its rejection was moved by George H. Flood.[101]

"The question presented for our decision," said one of the members, "is simply thisShall human beings, who are bound by every enactment upon our statute book, be permitted to request the legislature to modify or soften the laws under which they live?"