had been replaced by a free labor system. Although freedmen had been emancipated, their lives were greatly restricted by the Black Codes. The defining feature of the Black Codes was broad vagrancy law, which allowed local authorities to arrest freedpeople for minor infractions and commit them to involuntary labor. This period was the start of the convict lease system, also described as "slavery by another name" by Douglas Blackmon in his 2008 book of this title. Background Vagrancy laws date to the end of feudalism in Europe. Introduced by aristocratic and landowning classes, they had the dual purpose of restricting access of "undesirable" classes to public spaces and of ensuring a labor pool. Serfs were not emancipated from their land. Before the Civil War Southern states "Black Codes" in the antebellum South strongly regulated the activities and behavior of blacks, especially free Blacks, who were not considered citizens. Chattel slaves basically lived under the complete control of their owners, so there was little need for extensive legislation. "All Southern states imposed at least minimal limits on slave punishment, for example, by making murder or life-threatening injury of slaves a crime, and a few states allowed slaves a limited right of self-defense." As slaves could not use the courts or sheriff, or give testimony against a white man, in practice these meant little. North Carolina restricted slaves from leaving their plantation; if a male slave wished to court a female slave on another property, he needed a pass in order to pursue this relationship. Without one he risked severe punishment at the hands of the patrollers. Free blacks presented a challenge to the boundaries of white-dominated society. In many Southern states, particularly after Nat Turner's insurrection of 1831, they were denied the rights of citizens to assemble in groups, bear arms, learn to read and write, exercise free speech, or testify against white people in Court. After 1810, states made manumissions of slaves more difficult to obtain, in some states requiring an act of the legislature for each case of manumission. This sharply reduced the incidence of planters freeing slaves. All the slave states passed anti-miscegenation laws, banning the marriage of white and black people. Between 1687 and 1865, Virginia enacted more than 130 slave statutes, among which were seven major slave codes, with some containing more than fifty provisions. Maryland passed vagrancy and apprentice laws, and required Blacks to obtain