The law over their heads: the 1831 bond law, Article XIII, and the 1851 referendum

1831 – 1881

The regime began with a bond: Indiana's act of 1831 required every Black person coming into the state to register and to give a bond of five hundred dollars, with sureties, conditioned on good behavior and self-support — a sum beyond the reach of nearly any newcomer, which was the point. A settler who could not produce the certificate and bond stood exposed to the overseers of the poor, who could hire him out for six months, or to removal from the state on a justice of the peace's order; and it was unlawful to hire a newcomer who had not bonded. Governor James B. Ray had urged the measure in his 1829 message, and the machinery — registration, bond, overseers, justices — was the ordinary law of Indiana for the whole period in which St. Joseph County was settled. No registration, bond proceeding, or hiring-out under the act in St. Joseph County appears in any record reached; the law is printed at state size because it governed anyone who might have come, and its local silence is itself part of the record.

The constitution of 1851 wrote exclusion into the fundamental law: Article XIII of the constitution adopted that year provides, in its first section, "No negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution." Contracts made with a newcomer in violation of it were void, and any person employing or otherwise encouraging such a settler was liable to a fine of up to five hundred dollars, the fines pledged to the colonization fund. The constitutional convention adopted the article by a vote of 93 to 40. St. Joseph County's own delegate to that convention was Schuyler Colfax, who — on the Indiana Historical Bureau's account — opposed the exclusion clause by voice and by vote.

The referendum, and a conflict the record does not reconcile: Article XIII was submitted to the voters separately from the constitution itself, on 4 August 1851, and the statewide result stands in the sources in three irreconcilable figures, printed here whole and never averaged. The Indiana Historical Bureau's account, following Vanderstel, gives the vote for Article XIII as 113,828 to 21,873. The Indiana Historical Society's exhibit table gives 109,976 to 21,066 (against 109,319 to 26,755 for the constitution as a whole). The introduction to the 1922 printing of the constitution gives 88,910 to 21,066 (against 82,564 to 26,755 for the constitution). The Bureau's proportion is consistent across the tellings — about 84 percent approved Article XIII, against about 80 percent for the rest of the constitution: exclusion was more popular than the document that carried it. Only four Indiana counties voted against Article XIII — Elkhart, LaGrange, Randolph and Steuben. St. Joseph County was not among them. The county's own vote figures do not appear in any source reached; they stand in the Secretary of State's abstract of the 1851 returns and in Dorothy Riker's Indiana Election Returns, 1816–1851, and until one of those is read the county's number is printed as a named gap, not estimated.

The registration machinery that followed: by the act of 18 June 1852, Black residents who had settled in Indiana before 1 November 1851 were required to register with their county clerk, prove their residence by witnesses, and receive a certificate — the paper shield of the grandfathered, under a constitution that barred everyone who came after. The unwinding took a generation. Article XIII went unenforced in practice during and after the Civil War; in Smith v. Moody (1866) the Indiana Supreme Court held it void under the Thirteenth Amendment; and in 1881 the article was struck from the constitution altogether. The 1831 bond regime it had succeeded had already been superseded by the article it served. What repealed each piece, dated, is therefore: the bond law, overtaken by Article XIII in 1851; the article, voided by judgment in 1866 and removed from the text in 1881.

Sources

1. Lyda, The Negro in the History of Indiana — the 1831 act: registration, the $500 bond, hiring-out by the overseers of the poor, removal on a justice's order; Governor Ray's 1829 message (text via archive.org).
2. Constitution of Indiana (1851), Article XIII, §1 — the exclusion text; the void-contract and fine provisions; fines to the colonization fund.
3. Indiana Historical Society, National History Day exhibit materials — convention vote 93–40; the referendum table (constitution 109,319/26,755; Article XIII 109,976/21,066).
4. Indiana Historical Bureau — Article XIII approved by 84 percent against 80 percent for the constitution; Colfax's opposition by voice and vote; the Vanderstel figures (113,828 to 21,873).
5. Journal of the Convention / the 1922 printing of the constitution, introduction — the third set of figures (constitution 82,564/26,755; Article XIII 88,910/21,066), printed as a conflict, not resolved.
6. Indiana Historical Society, SC 1726 guide — the four counties voting against Article XIII: Elkhart, LaGrange, Randolph, Steuben.
7. Act of 18 June 1852 — registration of pre–1 November 1851 residents with the county clerk, proof by witnesses, certificate issued.
8. Smith v. Moody (Indiana Supreme Court, 1866) — Article XIII held void under the Thirteenth Amendment; article struck from the constitution, 1881.
9. Indiana State Library, guide to election returns — Dorothy Riker, Indiana Election Returns, 1816–1851 (1960), named as settler for the county vote, with the Secretary of State's abstract of the 1851 returns.