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Quiz for America Compared: Labor Laws After Emancipation: Haiti and the United States

Question

1. The Haitian Code of Laws and the Black Codes instituted in some of the former Confederate states after the Civil War differed in which of the following ways?

The Haitian law required every black person in the nation to perform agricultural work, whereas the Black Codes stipulated that only blacks in the South had to work.

The Haitian law prohibited rural laborers from migrating, whereas the Black Codes did not limit freed slaves’ mobility.

The Black Codes required freed slaves to make their children work, but the Haitian Code of Laws did not.

The Black Codes required freed slaves to perform agricultural labor, but the Haitian Code of Laws was more flexible.

Correct. The answer is b. The Haitian law specifically prohibited “the inhabitants of the country quitting it to dwell in towns or villages,” but the Black Codes stipulated only that freed slaves had to work, not that they had to limit their mobility.

Incorrect. The answer is b. The Haitian law specifically prohibited “the inhabitants of the country quitting it to dwell in towns or villages,” but the Black Codes stipulated only that freed slaves had to work, not that they had to limit their mobility.

Question

2. Unlike the white creators of the Black Codes, the men who drafted the Haitian Code of Laws were men of color. What factor mostly likely motivated the Haitian lawmakers’ actions?

Racism

Nationalism

Religious devotion

Economic self-interest

Correct. The answer is d. The Haitian lawmakers were men of color who were landowners and proprietors of plantations. These men drafted the Code of Laws out of their own economic self-interest in order to ensure that their former slaves would not abandon the plantations in search of a different way of life, leaving them without a labor force large enough to produce their crops.

Incorrect. The answer is d. The Haitian lawmakers were men of color who were landowners and proprietors of plantations. These men drafted the Code of Laws out of their own economic self-interest in order to ensure that their former slaves would not abandon the plantations in search of a different way of life, leaving them without a labor force large enough to produce their crops.