cate, according to the teſtimony of his contemporaries, he had no equal." J. Hammond Trumbull's Hiſtorical Notes. Backus, ii., 35. Trumbull's Connecticut, Vol. i. (1797), 417. Mr. Trumbull alſo mentions a queſtion raiſed in 1722, as to the ſtatus of the children of Indian captive-ſlaves, in a memorial to the Legiſlature, from which it is apparent that no doubt was entertained as to the legal ſlavery of children of negroes or imported Indians from beyond ſeas.
Ample evidence is given elſewhere in these notes of the fact, that the children of ſlaves were actually held and taken to be ſlaves, the property of the owners of the mothers, liable to be ſold and transferred like other chattels and as aſſets in the hands of executors and adminiſtrators.[1] This fact comes out in many portions of this hiſtory; there is no one thing more patent to the reader. The inſtances are numerous, and it is needleſs to recapitulate them here; but it may be proper to refer to the facts that in the inftructions of the town of Leiceſter to their representative in 1773, among the ways and means ſuggeſted for extinguiſhing ſlavery, they propoſed "that every negro child that ſhall be born in ſaid government after the enacting ſuch law ſhould be free at the ſame age that the children of white people are," and in the petition of the negro ſlaves for relief in
- ↑ "A bill of ſale, or other formal inſtrument, was not necſſary to transfer the property in a ſlave, which was a mere perſonal chattel, and might paſs, as other chattels, by delivery." Milford vs. Bellingham, 16 Maſs. Reports, 110. Governor Dudley's report to the Board of Trade on ſlaves and the ſlave-trade in Maſſachuſetts, etc., in 1708, ſtated that "in Boston, there are 400 negro ſervants, one half of whom were born here." Collections Amer. Stat. Aſſoc., i., 586.
