The Southern Judiciary and Slavery.
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I shall quote but from two other decisions, "The case," say the court, " was one of both rendered in 1858, a year after the Dred extraordinary aggravation, in which all law was set at defiance, public justice insulted Scott decision, and four years after the pas and the life of a human being, already in sage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. "We are not to forget," say the court, manacles, lawlessly destroyed. He was "nor are we to suppose that it was lost charged with the shocking crimes of rape sight of by the legislature, that under our and murder combined. But the officers of modified system of slavery, slaves are not justice had performed their duty, and had mere chattels, but are regarded in the two him safely incarcerated in jail to await the fold character of persons and property. vengeance of the law, in case his guilt was That as persons they are considered by our established according to its forms. There law as accountable moral agents, possessed was not the least necessity that the defend of the power of volition and locomotion. ants should interfere after the criminal had That certain rights have been conferred been secured and disarmed of all power of resistance or of flight, and shed human upon them by positive law and judicial de blood, even of a slave, without trial or con termination, and other privileges and indul gences have been conceded to them by the demnation. If the slave were guilty, of the universal consent of their owners. By uni crime imputed, no punishment would have form and universal usage, they are consti been too severe for him, and so by the tuted the agents of their owners and are law the penalty is death — death by hang sent on their business without written author ing — the mode adopted by the defendants ity. And, in like manner, they are sent to without and against the law. But no man, whether bond or free, is to be condemned perform those neighborly good offices com mon in every community. They are not at or punished without a hearing, a fair and all times in the service of their owners, and impartial trial. There is neither valor nor are allowed by universal sufferance, at night, patriotism in deeds like these. Not valor, or Sundays, holidays, and other occasions, because there is no contest — the victim is to go abroad, to attend church, to visit those already in bonds and harmless; nor patriot to whom they are related by nature, though ism) because the country has provided for the relation be not recognized by municipal the proper and legal punishment of offend law, and to exercise those innocent enjoy ers and needs not the aid of mobs and law ments, without it ever entering the mind of less combinations to wield the sword of any good citizen to demand written authority justice or quicken its stroke." 2 of them. The simple truth is, such indul It would thus appear that the courts of a gences have been so long and so uniformly slave State construed the law more favorably tolerated, that public sentiment upon the to freedom than did the Federal Supreme subject has acquired almost the force of Court; that they showed more considera positive law." * tion for the rights of the slave and for his The other case alluded to was one in which due protection than did the Federal Con a slave who was in jail charged with rape and gress in its enactments; and that their broad murder, was taken from the jail by a mob views and high conceptions of the rights of and hanged. The opinion in this case is well the slave are in marked contrast to the state worth careful perusal, and, although delivered ments of the popular novelist of the times, long after the passage of the Fugitive Slave when it was represented, that, under State Law, which denied the right of trial by jury, law, a slave was " not a man, but a thing," is in marked contrast to that law. and classed with " bundles, bales and boxes." 1 Jones v. Allen, I Head, 636.
1 Polk v, Fancher, I Head, 337.
