Which of the following arguments is best supported by this excerpt from an 1865 Mississippi law on vagrancy?
"All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time ... shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined in a sum not exceeding ... fifty dollars ... and imprisoned at the discretion of the court ... not exceeding ten days."
A. White southerners sought to use vagrancy laws to raise money by fining African Americans in response to the reconstruction of the South.
B. Following the Civil War, few African Americans had lawful employment.
C. Following the devastation of the Civil War, vagrancy was very common in southern states like Mississippi.
D. White southerners sought to use vagrancy laws to control African American labor.
