Slave law: the Mann rule moderated State v. Negro Will – North Carolina, 1834 (1 Dev. & Bat. 121); State v. Caesar – North Carolina, 1849 (9 Iredell 391)
“The prisoner is a human being, degraded indeed by slavery, but yet having ‘organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,’ like our own. “Does that benignant principle of the law, by which allowance is made for the infirmity of our nature … apply to a slave?? Or is he commanded, under pain of death, not to yield to these feelings and impulses of human nature, under any circumstances? I think the principle does apply, and am not willing [to] exclud[e] it from the case of slaves.” – Chief Justice Richmond Pearson, in Caesar “Shall one slave be the arbiter of the quarrels witnesses by him between another slave and the whites? … First denying their general subordination to the whites, it may be apprehended that they will end in denouncing the injustice of slavery itself, and, upon that pretext, band together to throw off their common bondage entirely.” – Justice Thomas Ruffin (dissenting), in CaesarSlave law: Problems of manumission by will Thompson v. Newlin – North Carolina, 1844 (3 Ired. Eq. 338); Thompson v. Newlin – North Carolina, 1851 (8 Ired. Eq. 32); Jincey v. Winfield’s Administrator – Virginia, 1853 (9 Gratt. 708)
| Ossian, an escaped slave hiding in the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina (1856) - courtesy Wikimedia Commons Slave market, Easton, Maryland - courtesy Wikimedia Commons “Unconditional submission is the general duty of the slave. Unlimited power is, in general, the legal right of the master. But this does not authorize the master to kill his slave, and the slave has a right to defend his life against the unlawful attempt of the master to take it.” – Justice William Gaston, in Negro Will
“[S]laves can only be held as property, and deeds and wills, having for their object their emancipation, or a qualified state of slavery, are against public policy, and a trust results. … The law will not allow itself to be baffled, and its policy evaded, by secret agreements, the very objects of which are to defeat the law itself.” – Justice Thomas Ruffin, in Newell I “Emancipation is not strictly a fit of property: It is the exoneration of a human being from the bonds which our institutions have fastened upon him, and which the beneficence f our times has authorized the master to remove.” - Justice Richard Moncure, in Jincey |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 3. OLD SOUTH LEGAL HISTORY > 3.3 The Old South: The Antebellum Period (1831-1861) > 3.3.1 The Old South (1831-1861): Law and the Beginnings of Industrialization >