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and all persons officiating in the rites of marriage without due authority of law are punished by fine and imprisonment. 

Under the old code, these provisions applied only to white persons. 

These new enactments, all will confess, are of terrifying tendency, add sanctity and solemnity to the marriage obligation, and tend to the moral elevation of the freedman by promoting chastity, and awakening a just sense of the responsibilities of the marital relation. 

With respect to crimes and punishment and criminal proceedings, there is next to entire  "equality before the law," for the freedman, as the following statute will show:

"1st Be it enacted by the general assembly, that every person having one-forth [[fourth]] or more of negro blood, shall be deemed a colored person, and every person, not a colored person, having

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