The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 57
On Mr Colter’s suggestion, and in order to have the assistance of the law, if we could get any from that quarter, I proceeded with him to ask the advice of an eminent counsellor. With respect to Cassy, as I had bought up Mr. Grip Curtis's pretended claim to her, she seemed safe enough; especially as, by the law of Louisiana, more humane and reasonable in this particular than that of any other slave state, a master, after allowing his slave to live as free for ten years, even without any formal emancipation, cannot after that renew his claim, of ownership; and it would not be difficult to prove that Cassy had for more than ten years past been recognized as free by the deceased Mr Curtis. But the case of Eliza, and especially of Montgomery, appeared to be surrounded by many legal difficulties.
No one in Louisiana, as appeared by an extract which the lawyer read to us from the Code Noir, or Slave Code, can emancipate a slave, except by special act of the legislature, unless that slave has attained the age of thirty years, and has behaved well for at least four years preceding his emancipation. Nor, according to the decision of the courts, are any emancipations, in case of slaves under thirty, to be established by the mere allowance of freedom. By another provision of the same code, children born of a mother then in a state of slavery, follow the condition of their mother, and are consequently slaves, and belong to the master of the mother; or as the civil code of Louisiana expresses it, "the children of slaves and the young of animals-belong to the proprietor of the mother of them by right of accession." Such unquestionably was the fact as to both Montgomery and Eliza; indeed it was by purchase as a slave that Montgomery had originally come into the possession of the deceased Mr Curtis; and as neither he nor Eliza were yet thirty years of age, nor near it, it did not seem possible that Mr Curtis could have executed in their behalf any valid act of emancipation. They, therefore, remained a part of his estate; and in default of any testamentary provision, they passed to Mr Agrippa Curtis, who, as his only brother, his father and mother being dead, was his sole heir. There was, indeed, a provision by which slaves under thirty years of age might be emancipated, provided the owner, upon explaining his motives for it to the judge of the parish and the police jury, could obtain the assent of the judge, and of three fourths of the jury, to the sufficiency of those motives; but as this could only be done in case of slaves born in the state, even if Mr Curtis had taken advantage of it in Eliza's case, it could not have afforded any benefit to Montgomery.
The law of Louisiana, following the civil law, from which it is mainly derived, and more humane in this respect than the English common law, which prevails in the rest of the states, in case a father, by acts or words, recognizes and acknowledges as such children of his born out of wedlock, gives to them, under the name of "natural children," a claim upon him for sustenance, support, and education in some means of earning a livelihood. But on the other hand, the right of a person, having lawful relations, to dispose of his property by gift, either during his life or after his death, is very much restricted. In England, and in all the United States except Louisiana, a man may give or will his property to whom he pleases; but there, if he have lawful children, he can give or will nothing to his natural children, though acknowledged to be such, beyond a bare subsistence; and though he have no lawful children, yet if he have parents, brothers, or sisters, he cannot alienate by gift or will above one fourth of his property at the utmost; the palpable object of which departure from the civil and Spanish law formerly in force is to prevent the mixed race from acquiring property by inheritance through paternal affection; while the provision restricting emancipation is evidently intended to keep as many of them as possible in the condition of slavery.
Tt might be, the lawyer told us, that Mr Curtis, in sending the two children to a free state, had, in so doing, made them free; and perhaps that was one of his objects in sending them. Had they remained atwas his sole heir. There was, indeed, a provision by which slaves under thirty years of age might be emancipated, provided the owner, upon explaining his motives for it to the judge of the parish and the police jury, could obtain the assent of the judge, and of three fourths of the jury, to the sufficiency of those motives; but as this could only be done in case of slaves born in the state, even if Mr Curtis had taken advantage of it in Eliza's case, it could not have afforded any benefit to Montgomery.
The law of Louisiana, following the civil law, from which it is mainly derived, and more humane in this respect than the English common law, which prevails in the rest of the states, in case a father, by acts or words, recognizes and acknowledges as such children of his born out of wedlock, gives to them, under the name of "natural children," a claim upon him for sustenance, support, and education in some means of earning a livelihood. But on the other hand, the right of a person, having lawful relations, to dispose of his property by gift, either during his life or after his death, is very much restricted. In England, and in all the United States except Louisiana, a man may give or will his property to whom he pleases; but there, if he have lawful children, he can give or will nothing to his natural children, though acknowledged to be such, beyond a bare subsistence; and though he have no lawful children, yet if he have parents, brothers, or sisters, he cannot alienate by gift or will above one fourth of his property at the utmost; the palpable object of which departure from the civil and Spanish law formerly in force is to prevent the mixed race from acquiring property by inheritance through paternal affection; while the provision restricting emancipation is evidently intended to keep as many of them as possible in the condition of slavery.
It might be, the lawyer told us, that Mr Curtis, in sending the two children to a free state, had, in so doing, made them free; and perhaps that was one of his objects in sending them. Had they remained at the north, they could not have been reclaimed; but it was not yet a settled question, whether, by returning back to Louisiana, they did not revert to slavery. The Supreme Court of that state had, indeed, once decided, as had been done in several other of the' slave states, that a slave once carried or sent into a free state became free beyond all power of reclamation; but that decision was made under the influence of old-fashioned ideas, which were fast passing into oblivion.; and whether the present court would stick to that opinion was more than he could venture to say.
As possession was nine points of the law, and in all questions relating to slavery, as the lawyer facetiously added, very nearly ten points, Mr Gilmore, in having Eliza in bis hands, had decidedly the advantage; and the lawyer informed us, in passing, that he had long known Mr Gilmore as a cunning, deceitful, cheating rogue; very smooth and plausible, and full of Yankee cant about duty, justice, and religion, and willingness to do what was right; but who seemed to have very little concern for any duty or justice that did not tend to feather his own nest.
We ought, he told us, if possible, to prevent Montgomery's falling into the same trap. In case of any attempt to seize him as a slave, even though he should ultimately sustain his right to freedom, he might still get into great difficulty. By the Slave Code, according to an extract that he read, "free people of color ought never to insult or strike white people, nor presume to conceive themselves equal to the whites; but on the contrary, they ought to yield to them on every occasion, and never speak to or answer them but with respect, under penalty of imprisonment according to the nature of the offence."
Now, the best we could make of it was, that Montomery was a free colored person. In Virginia and Rec in the fourth descent from a negro, all the other ancestors being white, the African taint, in the eye of the law, is extinguished; and those thus descended pass into the mass of white inhabitants, all the rights of whom they attain, even though one of their great-grandfathers or great-grandmothers had been a pure negro. But in several other of the states, and Louisiana among them, the African taint never can be got rid of. The most minute and imperceptible drop of African blood, however diluted by the best white blood of the nation, still suffices to degrade him in whose veins it runs into the class of the free colored, who "are not to presume to conceive themselves equal to the whites," but who are specially required "to yield to them on every occasion, and never speak to or answer them but with respect, under penalty of imprisonment." If, therefore, Montgomery, bein seized as a slave, should, in vindication of his liberty, speak disrespectfully to any of the catchpoles, and especially should he venture to repeat the knocking-down process, which he had once tried already on the person of Mr Grip Curtis, even though we should succeed in maintaining his right to freedom, he might still find himself exposed to very disagreeable consequences.
The first thing, therefore, to be done in Montgomery's case was, to prevent his falling into the hands of his claimants. As to Eliza, if we could contrive some way of getting her out of Gilmore's hands, we should then be in a much better position for maintaining her claim to freedom.
Montgomery, as it fortunately happened, had written to his mother just at leaving New York, mentioning, among other things, the name of the packet in which he was to sail; and this letter, by the like good luck, we found in the post office on leaving the lawyer's office.
Colter immediately employed a boat to proceed down the river, carrying a note to Montgomery from his mother. The passage of the packet from New York had been unusually short. She was found a few miles below the city, and according to the recommendation in the note, Montgomery immediately left her, and being set on shore by the boat, came up by land; and late that same evening he arrived at a retired and quiet house in the suburbs, indicated in the letter, at which Colter had procured lodgings for myself and Cassy.
The precaution we had taken was fortunate indeed. Mr Grip Curtis, as we afterwards found out, had employed some agent in New York to watch Montgomery's movements, and being informed of the vessel in which he came, soon after Montgomery had left, he boarded her, with a gang of assistants, on purpose to seize him.
My son, I have thee too! Snatched from the grasp, — saved, for the moment at least, from the already purchased cowhide of an infuriated and vindictive scoundrel, claiming to own thee! — Claiming to own my son, my boy, my child! no longer, as I left him, a prattling infant, but now full-grown in figure, features, every youthful grace and manly beauty, fit to compare with any body's son!
Never for me can the high ecstasy again be equalled of that moment in which I pressed my long lost boy to my bosom! But for his youthful heart, how choked with agony the pleasure of this, to me so joyous meeting! What was it to find even a father, whom, though he had heard so often of him from his mother, he had no personal remembrance of, when at the same time he learnt the dreadful situation of Eliza, his playmate, his girl-friend and confidant, his lover now and promised wife!
How the blood mantled into his cheeks! How his dark eyes — his mother's, but without their downeast mildness — flashed fire at the thought of her danger and distress! It was with much difficulty that we detained him for a moment; and that only by assurances that Colter already had spies about the house, so that if Eliza were removed, we should be able to trace her. He knew, he said, Mr Gilmore's house, and the adjoining premises, thoroughly. He knew also the servants in the family, having been, as a boy, a decided favorite of Mr Gilmore's black housekeeper. He would contrive some means to enter the house that very night, and, at all personal risks, to effect Eliza's rescue.
Of the thorough scoundrelism of Mr Grip Curtis, and his confederate, Mr Gilmore, all doubts were now removed. At Montgomery's last departure from New Orleans, a year or so before, to establish himself in business at New York, the deceased Mr Curtis had placed in his hands a sealed packet, with written. directions that it should be opened whenever his will was produced and proved in court, or within thirty days after his death, in case no will should be produced. It did not appear that Mr Curtis entertained any suspicions of the possible ill faith of his brother, or of Mr Gilmore, or that they would conspire together to defeat his intentions, and to misappropriate his property. It was only to guard against accidents, that he had taken this precaution.
On opening this package, which Montgomery now produced, we found it to contain a duplicate of Mr Curtis's will, executed in due form, by which he bestowed upon Eliza, whom he acknowledged and named in it as his natural daughter, one fourth part of his entire property, which consisted principally in houses in the city of New Orleans, estimated in the will to be worth some two hundred thousand dollars. This one fourth was all which, by the laws of Louisiana, he could give; the other three quarters going to his brother, who, with Mr Gilmore, was made his executor. But not content with even this large inheritance, this unworthy brother had conspired, it seems, with Mr Gilmore, not only to cheat his brother's orphan daughter out of her portion, but, by way of effectually stopping her mouth, and preventing all reclamations, to reduce her to slavery and concubinage; Gilmore, besides his part of her portion, to have her person also for his share of the spoils.
The will — after reciting that Mr Curtis had vainly several times attempted to obtain the assent of the parish judge and three fourths of the police jury to the manumission of Eliza, as the law required in case of slaves under thirty years of age, (that respectable body not thinking the circumstance that she was his only daughter and child a sufficient motive to justify it,) — proceeded to state, that he had sent her to be educated at Boston, with the hope, intention, and desire thereby to make her free which he declared her to be, so far as it was lawfully in his power to make her so. But in case the law should, notwithstanding his anxiety to divest himself of it, reserve to him and his estate any property in, or right to, the services of Eliza until her attaining to thirty years of age, then, in that case, he devised and bequeathed those services to Cassy, — describing her as a free woman, manumitted many years since by himself, and since employed as his housekeeper, — in full confidence that, as she had so long acted the part of a mother towards Eliza, she would continue to do the same.
This was all the mention made of Gassy in the will; nor was there any mention of Montgomery, beyond a declaration of his freedom; but from a separate paper, contained in the parcel, it appeared that Mr Curtis had deposited the sum of twenty thousand dollars with a London banker, payable, in case of his death, to Montgomery, for the joint benefit of himself and his mother — a contrivance resorted to, apparently, for defeating the stringent restrictions of the Louisiana law on the power of devising property by will in the case of persons leaving near relations. The parcel also contained an official copy of a formal act of emancipation, executed many years ago, in favor of Gassy, before a notary public; Mr Gilmore being one of the witnesses. The will wound up with a most solemn adjuration to the two executors to watch sedulously over the welfare of the testator's daughter, whose guardians, during the continuance of her minority, they were declared to be. What attention they had paid to this adjuration we have seen. They were infamous scoundrels, no doubt. Who questions it? Yet they had their temptations. Twenty-five thousand dollars apiece; to Gilmore, the possession of a beautiful girl; to Grip Curtis, the gratification of bis furious revenge as well upon the mother as on the son. And it was only three persons that they sought to reduce to slavery. Pray how much worse were they than so many other of your northern Gilmores and Curtises, who — without any direct and positive temptation at all, beyond the uncertain hope of office, or of currying favor with southern customers — are ready to do their best towards the making and keeping of three millions of slaves; even to the hunting down and delivering up to the pretended claimants — without stopping to inquire whether the claim is any better founded than that set up by Gilmore and Curtis to Eliza — any panting fugitive, man, woman,-or child, who may take refuge among them? Any man ready to do that — any man who does not blush at the very thought of it — what is he but a Gilmore and Grip Curtis in his soul?