In the entire code this deceptive form, of apparently including all persons, was a signally dishonest feature.
The makers of the law evidently intended that it should apply to the negro alone, for it was administered on that basis with rigorous severity.

The general phrasing was to deceive people outside, and, perhaps, to lull the consciences of some objectors at home, but it made no difference whatever in the execution of the statutes.

White men, who had no more visible means of support than the negro, were left undisturbed, while the negro, whose visible means of support were in his strong arms and his willingness to work, was prevented from using the resources conferred upon him by nature, and reduced not merely to the condition of a slave, but subjected to the demoralization of being adjudged a criminal.
In Florida the laws resembled those of Alabama, but were perhaps more severe in their penalties.

The "vagrant" there might be hired out for full twelve months, and the money arising from his labor, in case the man had no wife and children, was directed to be applied for "the benefit of the orphans and poor of the county," although the negro had been declared a vagrant because he had no visible means of support, and was therefore quite as much in need of the avails of his labor as those to whom the law diverted them.

Among the curious enactments of that State was one to establish and organize a criminal court for each county, empowered to exercise jurisdiction in the trial of all offenses where the punishment did not affect the life of the offender.