answer promptly all calls and execute all lawful orders and commands of the master's family. They had to be especially civil and polite to their master, his family, and guests, for which they in turn should "receive gentle and kind treatment."
The statute provided for a regular form of contract between master and servant, which was understood to include all of the above stipulations unless otherwise provided.
APPRENTICE LAWS
The early legislatures also made detailed apprentice laws. Although it is scarcely open to argument that, in making such laws, they did not have in mind primarily Negroes, still many of the statutes made no mention of race, and, therefore, cannot be properly discussed here. Thus, Alabama[51] had a long statute on apprentices, but the only reference to the Negro was the rule that, if the minor be a child of a freedman, the former owner of the child should have the preference of apprenticing him, if a suitable person.
In Kentucky,[52] if the apprentice was white, the master must teach him reading, writing, and common arithmetic up to and including the "Rule of Three"; if a Negro, the master must pay at the end of the apprenticeship fifty dollars to a girl and one hundred dollars to a boy, but if the master should teach the apprentice to read and write, he was not bound to pay any money. In Kentucky, also, in apprenticing Negroes, preference was given to their former owners, if the latter were suitable persons.
Mississippi[53] had an elaborate apprentice law which
