There were laws in slavery?

Well, yea slaves had to follow laws that their masters created. Slavery throughout the South had to lived under a set of laws called the Slave Codes. The basic idea of the Slave Codes was to basically let slaves know that they were considered property, not people. Slaves were not allow to go against the whites, make contracts, leave the plantation without permission or hit a white person even if it was for self defense, buy and sell things, gather with their people and visit the homes of slave owners or free blacks. They had no social life and weren’t given no type of freedom it was nothing but work, work and more hard work.. Not like today, back in the day there was no such thing as murder in slavery, or rape of a woman, it was just considered trespassing.

            The laws became even tighter if there were rumors of slave revolt.  Patrols were set up to protect the Slave codes. It searched for anything that can lead to insurrection. If insurrection occurs or not, whites will form committees that will torture and kill the blacks. The blacks had to follow the slave codes and most of them did to prevent any type of mistreatment.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html : Includes information about Slave codes