Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
Page 37
personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their
executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, construc-
tions, and purposes whatever.
Lou. Civil Code, art. 35. Stroud's Sketch, p. 22.
A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he
belongs.
Judge Ruffin's Decision in the Case of The State v. Mann. 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 Common-
wealth, 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 dis-
solved 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 connexion 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 recognised 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.*
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 per-
mitted. For the present purpose, we give an extract from the
Civil Code of Louisiana, as quoted by Judge Stroud:--
A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master
Civil Code, Article 35. Stroud, p. 22.
may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry and his labour;
he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but
what must belong to his master.
According to Judge Ruffin, a slave is “one doomed in his
Wheeler's Law of Slavery, p. 246. State v. Mann.
own person, and his posterity, to live without
knowledge, and without the capacity to make any-
thing 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):--
All the acquisitions of the slave in possession are the property of his master,
Gist v. Toohey, 2 Rich. 424.
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
Ibid.
the purchase of his children, into the hands of B, and B purchased
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.
Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law, to be chattels
Law of S. Carolina. Cobb's Digest, 971.
personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their
executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, construc-
tions, 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.
We hardly think that a provision that a slave should never
Williams v. Ash, 1 How, U. S. Rep. 1. 5 U. S. Dig. 792, s. 5.
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 amphi-
theatre was the favourite resort of the most refined of her
citizens, as well as the great “school of morals” for the multi-
tude. A few references only will show, as far as we desire
to show, how much safer it is now to trust man with absolute
power over his fellow, than it was then.
IX. While slaves turned the handmill they were generally chained, and had a
broad wooden collar, to prevent them from eating the grain. The furca, which
in later language means a gibbet, was, in older dialect, used to denote a wooden
fork or collar, which was made to bear upon their shoulders, or around their
necks, as a mark of disgrace, as much as an uneasy burden.
The reader has already seen in Chapter V., that this instru-
ment of degradation has been in use in our own day, in certain
of the slave States, under the express sanction and protection of
statute laws; although the material is different, and the con-
struction doubtless improved by modern ingenuity.
X. Fetters and chains were much used for punishment or restraint, and were,
in some instances, worn by slaves during life, through the sole authority of the
master. Porters at the gates of the rich were generally chained. Field-
labourers worked for the most part in irons posterior to the first ages of the
republic.
The legislature of South Carolina specially sanctions the
same practices, by excepting them in the “protective enactment,” which inflicts the penalty of one hundred pounds “in case any
person shall wilfully cut out the tongue,” &c., of a sl
ave, “or
shall inflict any other cruel punishment other than by whipping
or beating with a horse-whip, cowskin, switch, or small stick, or
by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave.”
XI. Some persons made it their business to catch runaway slaves.
That such a profession, constituted by the highest legislative
authority in the nation, and rendered respectable by the com-
mendation expressed or implied of statesmen and divines, and
of newspapers political and religious, exists in our midst, espe-
cially in the free States, is a fact which is, day by day, making
itself too apparent to need testimony. The matter seems, how-
ever, to be managed in a more perfectly open and business-like
manner in the State of Alabama than elsewhere. Mr. Jay cites
the following advertisement from the Sumpter County (Ala.)
Whig:--
The undersigned having bought the entire pack of Negro Dogs (of the Hay
and Allen Stock), he now proposes to catch runaway negroes. His charges will
be Three Dollars per day for hunting, and Fifteen Dollars for catching a runaway.
He resides three and one-half miles north of Livingston, near the lower Jones
Bluff-road.
William Gambel.
Nov. 6, 1845. 6m.
The following is copied, verbatin et literatim, from the
Dadeville (Ala.) Banner, of November, 1852. The Dadeville
Banner is “devoted to politics, literature, education, agriculture,
&c.”
The undersigned having an excellent pack of Hounds, for trailing and catching
runaway slaves, informs the public that his prices in future will be as follows for
such services:--
Dollars.
For each day employed in hunting or trailing 2.50
For catching each slave 10.00
For going over ten miles and catching slaves 20.00
If sent for, the above prices will be exacted in cash. The subscriber resides
one mile and a half south of Dadeville, Ala.
B. Black.
Dadeville, Sept. 1, 1852. 1tf.
XII. The runaway, when taken, was severely punished by authority of the
master, or by the judge at his desire; sometimes with crucifixion, amputation of a
foot, or by being sent to fight as a gladiator with wild beasts; but most frequently
by being branded on the brow with letters indicative of his crime.
That severe punishment would be the lot of the recaptured
runaway, every one would suppose, from the “absolute power” of
the master to inflict it. That it is inflicted in many cases, it is
equally easy and needless to prove. The peculiar forms of punish-
ment mentioned above are now very much out of vogue, but the
following advertisement by Mr. Micajah Ricks, in the Raleigh (N. C.) Standard of July 18th, 1838, shows that something of
classic taste in torture still lingers in our degenerate days.
Run away, a negro woman and two children. A few days before she went
off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side of her face. I tried to make the
letter M.
It is charming to notice the naïf betrayal of literary pride on the
part of Mr. Ricks. He did not wish that letter M to be taken as
a specimen of what he could do in the way of writing. The
creature would not hold still, and he fears the M may be illegible.
The above is only one of a long list of advertisements of
maimed, cropped, and branded negroes, in the book of Mr. Weld,
entitled American Slavery as It is, p. 77.
XIII. Cruel masters sometimes hired torturers by profession, or had such persons
in their establishments, to assist them in punishing their slaves. The noses and
ears, and teeth of slaves, were often in danger from an enraged owner; and some-
times the eyes of a great offender were put out. Crucifixion was very frequently
made the fate of a wretched slave for a trifling misconduct, or from mere caprice.
For justification of such practices as these, we refer again to
that horrible list of maimed and mutilated men, advertised by
slaveholders themselves, in Weld's American Slavery as It is, p. 77. We recal the reader's attention to the evidence of the
monster Kephart, given in Part I. As to crucifixion, we pre-
sume that there are wretches whose religious scruples would
deter them from this particular form of torture, who would not
hesitate to inflict equal cruelties by other means; as the Greek
pirate, during a massacre in the season of Lent, was conscience-
striken at having tasted a drop of blood. We presume?--Let
any one but read again, if he can, the sickening details of that
twelve hours' torture of Souther's slave, and say how much more
merciful is American slavery than Roman.
The last item in Blair's description of Roman slavery is the
following:--
By a decree passed by the Senate, if a master was murdered when his slaves
might possibly have aided him, all his household within reach were held as impli-
cated, and deserving of death; and Tacitus relates an instance in which a family
of four hundred were all executed.
To this alone, of all the atrocities of the slavery of old heathen
Rome, do we fail to find a parallel in the slavery of the United
States of America.
There are other respects, in which American legislation has
reached a refinement in tyranny of which the despots of those
early days never conceived. The following is the language of
Gibbon:--
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman
slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agree-
able, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years
would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom. * * * Without
destroying the distinction of ranks, a distant prospect of freedom and honours was
presented even to those whom pride and prejudice almost disdained to number
among the human species.*
The youths of promising genius were instructed in the arts and sciences, and
their price was ascertained by the degree of their skill and talents. Almost every
profession, either liberal or mechanical, might be found in the household of an
opulent senator.†
The following chapter will show how “the best comfort”
which Gibbon knew for human adversity is taken away from the
American slave; how he is denied the commonest privileges of
education and mental improvement, and how the whole tendency
of the unhappy system, under which he is in bondage, is to take
from him the consolations of religion itself, and to degrade him
from our common humanity, and common brotherhood with the
Son of God.
* See also the case of State v. Abram, 10 Ala. 928, 7 U. S. Dig. p. 449.
“The master or overseer, and not the slave, is the proper judge whether the slave
is too sick to be able to labour. The latter cannot, therefore, resist the order of
the former to go to work.”
* Gibbon's “Decline and F all,” Chap. II.
† Ibid.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MEN BETTER THAN THEIR LAWS.
Judgment is turned away backward,
And Justice standeth afar off
;
For Truth is fallen in the street,
And Equity cannot enter.
Yea, Truth faileth;
And he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey.
There is one very remarkable class of laws yet to be con-
sidered.
So full of cruelty and of unmerciful severity is the slave-code--
such an atrocity is the institution of which it is the legal defini-
tion--that there are multitudes of individuals too generous and
too just to be willing to go to the full extent of its restrictions
and deprivations.
A generous man, instead of regarding the poor slave as a piece
of property, dead, and void of rights, is tempted to regard him
rather as a helpless younger brother, or as a defenceless child,
and to extend to him, by his own good right arm, that protec-
tion and those rights which the law denies him. A religious
man, who, by the theory of his belief, regards all men as
brothers, and considers his Christian slave, with himself, as a
member of Jesus Christ--as of one body, one spirit, and called
in one hope of his calling--cannot willingly see him “doomed
to live without knowledge,” without the power of reading the
written Word, and to raise up his children after him in the same
darkness.
Hence, if left to itself, individual humanity would, in many
cases, practically abrogate the slave-code. Individual humanity
would teach the slave to read and write, would build school-
houses for his children, and would, in very, very many cases,
enfranchise him.
The result of all this has been foreseen. It has been foreseen
that the result of education would be general intelligence; that
the result of intelligence would be a knowledge of personal
rights; and that an inquiry into the doctrine of personal rights
would be fatal to the system. It has been foreseen, also, that
the example of disinterestedness and generosity, in emancipation,
might carry with it a generous contagion, until it should
become universal; that the example of educated and emancipated