Yet the codes reminded both Northerners and freedpeople of a return to slavery because the most egregious of them—those in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas—defined black people as agricultural and domestic workers and their white employers as “masters.” The laws were as close to apartheid as the United States ever came. They gave employers near absolute control of their laborers during the hours of labor (which South Carolina defined as from sunrise to sunset) and when they were not working. Employers retained the right of physically punishing their workers and docking their pay. In
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