In 1740, in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion, the South Carolina legislature passed An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing Negroes, a new set of rules for relations between the rulers and the ruled. It restricted the movement of slaves, set standards for their treatment, established punishments for their crimes, explained the procedures for their prosecution and codified the rules of evidence for their trials; in capital cases, the charges were to be heard by two justices and a jury comprising at least three men. The law also made it a crime for anyone to teach a slave to write, in
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