ABSTRACT
Each southern state had a framework of laws that were supposed to govern the behaviour of slaves. While there were variations between states about minor issues, southern slave law was broadly similar regardless of location often due to the fact that migrants from eastern states helped to draw up the slave laws of new states during the antebellum era. Many owners feared that slaves would become uncontrollable because of the influence of others and that is partly what local slave ordinances were meant to address. Most of this particular ordinance was passed in Charleston in 1806 and its clear intention is to limit the freedom that some slaves enjoyed in Charleston. Slaves in Charleston had operated a weekly Sunday market since the early eighteenth century, mainly for the sale of fresh food grown on garden patches allotted to them by masters, but also to sell handicrafts made in whatever spare time slaves were allowed.
