Judge Ruffin's Decision in
the case of The State v.
Manu. Wheeler's
Law of Slavery, 246
Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect. The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect.
II. At first, the master possessed the uncontrolled power of life and death.
Judge Clarke, in case of State of Miss
v. Jones. Wheeler, 252
At a very early period in
Virginia, the power of life over
slaves was given by statute.
III. He might kill, mutilate or torture his slaves, for any or no offence; he might force them to become gladiators or prostitutes.
The privilege of killing is now somewhat abridged; as to mutilation and torture, see the case of Souther v. The Commonwealth, 7 Grattan, 673, quoted in Chapter III., above. Also State v. Mann, in the same chapter, from Wheeler, p. 244.
IV. The temporary unions of male with female slaves were formed and dissolved at his command; families and friends were separated when he pleased.
See the decision of Judge Mathews in the case of Girod v. Lewis, Wheeler, 199:
It is clear, that slaves have no legal capacity to assent to any contract. With the consent of their master, they may marry, and their moral power to agree to such a contract or connection as that of marriage cannot be doubted; but whilst in a state of slavery it cannot produce any civil effect, because slaves are deprived of all civil rights.
See also the chapter below on "the separation of families," and the files of any southern newspaper, passim.
V. The laws recognized no obligation upon the owners of slaves, to furnish them with food and clothing, or to take care of them in sickness.
The extent to which this deficiency in the Roman law has been supplied in the American, by "protective acts", has been exhibited above.[1]
VI. Slaves could have no property but by the sufferance of their master, for whom they acquired everything, and with whom they could form no engagements which could be binding on him.
The following chapter will show how far, American legislation is in advance of that of the Romans, in that it makes it a penal offence on the part of the master to permit his slave to hold property, and a crime on the part of the slave to be so permitted. For the present purpose, we give an extract from the Civil code of Louisiana, as quoted by Judge Stroud:
Civil Code
Article 35.
Stroud, p. 22
A slave is one who is in the power of a master
to whom he belongs. The master may sell him,
dispose of his person, his industry,
and his labor; he can do nothing,
possess nothing, nor acquire anything
but what must belong to his master.
Wheeler's Law
of Slavery, p.
246 State v.
Manu.
According to Judge Ruffin, a slave is
"one doomed in his own person, and his
posterity, to live without knowledge,
and without the capacity to
make anything his own, and to
toil that another may reap the fruits."
With reference to the binding power of engagements between master and slave, the following decisions from the United States Digest are in point (7, p. 449):
Gist v. Toehey,
2 Rich
424
All the acquisitions of the slave in possession
are the property of his master,
notwithstanding the promise of his
master that the slave shall have certain of
them.
A slave paid money which he had earned over and above his wages, for the purchase of his children into the hands of B, and B purchased Ibid, such children with the money. Held that the master of such slave was entitled to recover the money of B.
VII. The master might transfer his rights by either sale or gift, or might bequeath them by will.
Law of S. Carolina.
Cobb's
Digest, 971
Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.
VIII. A master selling, giving, or bequeathing a slave, sometimes made it a provision that he should never be carried abroad, or that he should be manumitted on a fixed day; or that, on the other hand, he should never be emancipated, or that he should be kept in chains for life.
Williams v. Ash,
1 How. U. S.
Rep. 1. 5 U. S.
Dig. 792, § 5
We hardly think that a provision that a slave should never be emancipated, or that he should be kept in chains for life, would be sustained. A provision that the slave should not be carried out of the state, or sold, and that on the happening of either event he should be free, has been sustained.
The remainder of Blair's account of Roman slavery is devoted rather to the practices of masters than the state of the law itself. Surely, the writer is not called upon to exhibit in the society of enlightened, republican and Christian America, in the nineteenth century, a parallel to the atrocities committed in pagan Rome, under the sceptre of the persecuting Cæsars, when the amphitheatre was the favorite resort of the most refined of her citizens, as well as the great "school of morals" for the multitude.
- ↑ See also the case of State v. Ahram, 10 Ala. 928. 7 U. S. Dig. p. 419. "The master or overseer, and not the slave, is the proper judge whether the slave is too sick to be able to labor. The latter cannot, therefore, resist the order of the former to go to work."
