for selling or giving liquor to Indians a fine of between twenty-five and one hundred dollars. As late as 1903 one finds in the revised statutes of Maine[44] a provision that one who sells or gives to an Indian intoxicating liquors forfeits not less than five nor more than twenty dollars, one-half to complainant. It must be clear that the foregoing laws were not passed solely for the moral uplift of the Indian, but quite as much as a protection to white people from drunken Indians. A similar motive must have actuated the Southern States in enacting the laws of 1865-1868, and it has been, at least, one incentive for the present prohibition legislation in the South.
LABOR CONTRACTS OF NEGROES
Another common form of legislation with regard to free Negroes was that relative to their contracts for personal service. A Florida[45] statute of 1865 required that all contracts with persons of color should be in writing and fully explained to them before two credible witnesses, and that one copy of the contract should be kept by the employer and the other by some judicial officer of the State and county wherein the service was to be performed. Contracts for less than thirty days might be oral. The Negro who failed to perform his contract by wilful disobedience of orders, wanton impudence, or disrespect, failure or refusal to do the work assigned to him, idleness, or abandonment of the premises, was treated as a vagrant. In 1866[46] the law ceased to be a race distinction when, by a new enactment, it was greatly limited and made applicable to whites and blacks alike.
