By 1820, 458 former slaves had been freed in the state. The legislature restricted their lives, requiring free blacks to carry identification and forbidding them from carrying weapons or voting. In 1822 planters decided it was too awkward to have free blacks living near slaves and passed a state law forbidding emancipation except by special act of the legislature for each manumission. In 1860 only 1,000 of the 437,000 blacks in the state were recorded as free. Most of these free people lived in wretched conditions near Natchez.