SLAVERY. 229 SLAVERY. granted by Spain to the English South Sea Com- pany. Thereafter all Englishmen could enter this field and continue their former trade to the Eng- lish colonies. Of the total number of slaves imported previous to the American Revolution, British subjects proljably carried half, employ- ing in one year 192 ships, carrying 47,000 slaves. Often a fourth of the slaves perished in the over- crowding of the 'middle passage.' Massacre and the torch marked the track of the kidnapping African slaver and numbers of slaves died during the process of 'seasoning,' or acclimatization in their new homes. Research has proved that the first negroes landed at Jamestown in 1019 and otliers brought by earlj- privateers were not reduced to slavery, but to limited servitude, a legalized status of Indian, white, and negro servants preceding slavery in most, if not all, of the English main- land colonies. Statutory recognition of slavery occurred in Massachusetts in 1041, in Connecti- cut in 1050, in Virginia in 1601, and later in the other colonies. Jews, iloors, and Turks were also subjects of colonial slavery. Indian slaver^' was confined chiefly to the seventeenth century with the English, as their Indian captives were less profitable than those of the Spanish, who were subjected to more rigorous treatment. Slavery in the region now constituting the United States was patriarchal. Statutory law and court de- cisions added to such incidents of servitude as alienation, whipping, disfranchisement, limited marriage, trade, etc., first the incident of per- petual service and then a denial of civil and juridical capacity, as well as of marriage, prop- erty, and possession of children, thus creating slavery. The slave, contrary to the famous obiter dicta in the Dred Scott decision (see Deed Scott Case), had some legal rights, such as limited personal agency, security (after 1788), support in age or sickness, a right to limited religious instruction, and suit and evidence in special cases. Custom gave numerous rights, such as private property, marriage, free time, contractual ability, and to females domestic or lighter prtedial labor, which, however, the mas- ter was not bound to respect. Barbarities like mutilation, branding, chaining, and murder were regulated or prohibited by law, but instances of cruelty were not infrequent before the nineteenth century. It was a mooted point in the courts of the former slave-holding States of the United States whether a slave had any rights under the com- mon law which the master was bound to respect. There was very little precedent in the English law, and under the early Roman law a master had absolute power of life and death over his slaves, who were generally captives taken in war. In 1820 a ^Mississippi court held that under the common law the wanton killing of a slave was murder. In 1851 the Supreme Court of Georgia repudiated the reasoning advanced for the above conclusion, contending that a master had abso- lute dominion over a slave under the common law. The first legal provision in America on this subject seems to have been a Virginia statute of 1723. making the willful killing of a slave murder. In 1770 a colonial act prohibited the malicious and unnecessary killing of slaves by white men. However, in most of the Southern States, stat- utes were enacted prohibiting the wanton killing or mutilation of a slave, thus finally disposing of the question. Slaves were liable under the criminal laws of the States in which they lived. Host of the slave States also passed statutes se- curing to slaves certain other rights, such as to be treated in a hunuine manner, to receive medi- cal attention when ill, and to be provided with the necessaries of life when from old age or other causes they were unable to work. With such humane provisions recognition of a slave as a person ceased, and for all other pur- poses he was regarded as a chattel, subject to the will of his master, and a thing to be bought and sold. The law of personal property was applied in governing his ownership. The children of a slave mother belonged to her owner, irrespective of who owned the father. In most of the South- ern States the marriage of slaves was not recog- nized in law, though perhaps generally encour- aged by slave-owners from reOgious or moral principles. The legal duties and priviliges of the nuirriage relation were considered to be incom- patible with the duties owed by the contracting parties to their owners. The question of tlie legal status and effect of a slave marriage has be- come important since the general emancipation of the slaves in determining the descent and dis- tribution of property of former slaves. General- ly, the States in which slavery flourished have enacted statutes providing for legalizing such marriages by certain formalities, and in a few States continued cohabitation merely, after eman- cipation, was held sufficient. However, it is douljtful if any of these States would recognize as valid a marriage contracted during slavery and followed by separation before emancipation. A slave could not hold property, and anything acquired by him belonged to his master." The testimony of a slave would not be received in a civil action in which a white person was a party. However, slaves could testify in a criminal suit in which other slaves were defendants, or in ac- tions to secure their freedom. The right of an owner to give a slave his freedom was recognized, and a free negro could hold property. Sentiment against the increase of the negro population and the slave trade early developed in America. English colonies by numerous stat- utes from 1095 imposed duties to discourage or prohibit slave traflic, but British merchants and commercial policy defeated these efl'orts. The enforced slave trade appears in State constitu- tions, and in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence as a justification of the American Revolution. Virginia by protest in 1772, Con- necticut by statute in 1774, and Delaware by her Constitution in 1770 attempted to stop the trade, and Virginia, by an act of 1778. was the first political community to prohibit it with efficient penalties. Similar action in nine other States during 178.3-1789; abolition of slavery in Massa- chusetts and Pennsylvania in 1780: the desire of John Jay to make prohibition a feature of the Treaty of Paris of 1783: the struggle for prohibi- tion in the Federal Convention, resulting in the compromise limiting the duration of the trade to twenty years, at the end of which period the United States passed the act of 1807 abolishing it, show the priority and force of American sen- timent against the slave trade. Similar senti- ment developed in Europe. Denmark by royal order prohibited the trade after 1802 in her pos-
