The June 1865 Council meeting was a call to respond to the Black presence in Austin with more police and with expanded police power. Following the call for more police in order to deal with the presence of Black people, a vagrancy law was put into place to single out Blacks. It called for the arrest and punishment of “all able-bodied Negroes who have abandoned the service of their employers, for the purpose of idleness, or who are found loitering or rambling about, or idly wandering about the streets or other public thoroughfares.” Punishment could include arrest, whippings, and a fine between $3 and $100. Ifa person could not pay their appointed fine, an offender could be hired out to the lowest bidder (Mears 2009:26). Exorbitant fines provided abasis for retaking Black’s freedom and putting them to work building up the state’s resources, including providing forced labor to help with the construction of the Texas State Capitol (Blue 2000).