Laws regulated the behavior and lives of the enslaved: no slave could sell any merchandise without a permit, be outside the master's house after 9 o'clock in the evening or gather in groups larger than three without the presence of a white person. As the Connecticut legal code illustrates, punshiments for breaking these laws were severe, including public whipping. Pages 234-235 in the Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut in America (1784) govern slaves' lives and slaveowner responsibilities.

Image: Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut in America, 1784. The Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich.