Slave law: The quiet rebellion of Chancellor Wythe and Judge Tucker Pleasants v. Pleasants – Virginia, 1800 (6 Va. 319); Hudgins v. Wright – Virginia, 1806 (11 Va. 134)
Slave law: Balancing interest against humanity Commonwealth v. Turner – Virginia, 1827 (5 Rand. 678); State v. Mann – North Carolina, 1829 (13 N.C. 263)
| Sheet music celebrating Frederick Douglass's escape from slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore (1845) - courtesy Wikimedia Commons Slave prison, Alexandria, Virginia - courtesy U.S. National Archives and Wikimedia Commons “If he was merely property, and nothing else, he might be destroyed by his master. But … [t]he slave was not only a thing, but a person, and this well-known distinction would extend its protection to the slave as a person, except so far as the application of it conflicted with the enjoyment of the slave as a thing. Upon this ground, was his life protected: on this ground, I apprehend, his person was protected from all unnecessary, cruel, and inhuman punishments. I see no incompatibility between this degree of protection, and the full enjoyment of the right of property … [W]hilst kindness and humane treatment are calculated to render them contented and happy, is there no danger that oppression and tyranny, against which there is no redress, may drive them to despair?” – Justice William Brockenbrough (dissenting), in Turner “The end [of slavery]
is the profit of the master, his security and the public safety; the subject,
one doomed in his own person, and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and
without the capacity to make any thing his own … such services can only be
expected from one who has no will of his own; who surrenders his will in
implicit obedience to that of another. …
The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave
perfect. I most freely confess my sense
of the harshness of this proposition … [A]s a principle of moral right, every
person in his retirement must repudiate it.
But in the actual condition of things, it must be so.” – Justice Thomas Ruffin, in Mann |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 3. OLD SOUTH LEGAL HISTORY > 3.2 The Old South: The Early Republican Era (1787-1831) > 3.2.1 Coastal Upper South (1787-1831): Revolutionary Backwash > 3.2.2 Coastal Upper South (1787-1831): The Revolt Against Federal Power Begins >