right of personal protection belongs to his master, who can maintain an action of trespass for the battery of his slave. There can be therefore no offence against the state for a mere beating of a slave unaccompanied with any circumstances of cruelty (!!), or an attempt ie kill and murder. The peace of the state is not thereby broken; for a slave is not generally regarded as legally capable of being within the peace of the state. He is not a citizen, and is not in that character entitled to her protection.
What declaration of the utter indifference of the state to the sufferings of the slave
See State v.
Hale. Wheeler,
p. 239. 2 Hawk.
N. C. Rep. 582
could be more elegantly cool and clear? But in North Carolina it appears that the case is argued still more elaborately.
Chief Justice Taylor thus shows that, after all, there are reasons why an assault and battery upon the slave may, on the whole, have some such general connection with the comfort and security of the community, that it may be construed into a breach of the peace, and should be treated as an indictable offence.
The instinct of a slave may be, and generally
is, tamed into subservience to his master's will,
and from him he receives chastisement, whether it
be merited or not, with perfect submission; for he
knows the extent of the dominion assumed over
him, and that the law ratifies the claim. But
when the same authority is wantonly usurped by
a stranger, nature is disposed to assert her rights,
and to prompt the slave to a resistance, often
momentarily successful, sometimes fatally so.
The public peace is thus broken, as much as if a
free man had been beaten; for the party of the
aggressor is always the strongest, and such
contests usually terminate by overpowering the slave,
and inflicting on him a severe chastisement,
without regard to the original cause of the conflict.
There is, consequently, as much reason for
making such offences indictable as if a white man had
been the victim. A wanton injury committed on
a slave is a great provocation to the owner, awakens his resentment, and has a direct tendency to a breach of the peace, by inciting him to seek immediate vengeance. If resented in the heat of blood, it would
probably extenuate a homicide to manslaughter,
upon the same principle with the case stated by
Lord Hale, that if A riding on the road, B had
whipped his horse out of the track, and then A
had alighted and killed B. These offences are
usually committed by men of dissolute habits,
hanging loose upon society, who, being repelled from association with well-disposed citizens, take refuge in the company of colored persons and slaves, whom they deprave by their example, embolden by their familiarity, and then beat, under the expectation that a slave dare not resent a blow from a white man. If such offences may be committed
with impunity, the public peace will not only be
rendered extremely insecure, but the value of slave property must be much impaired, for the offenders
can seldom make any reparation in damages.
Nor is it necessary, in any ease, that a person
who has received an injury, real or imaginary,
from a slave, should carve out his own justice;
1 Rev Code.
445
for the law has made ample and summary provision for the punishment of all trivial offences committed by slaves, by carrying them before a justice, who is authorized to pass sentence for their being publicly whipped. This provision, while it
excludes the necessity of private vengeance, would
seem to forbid its legality, since it effectually
protects all persons from the insolence of slaves, even
where their masters are unwilling to correct them
upon complaint being made. The common law
has often been called into efficient operation, for
the punishment of public cruelty inflicted
upon animals, for needless and wanton barbarity
exercised even by masters upon their slaves, and for
various violations of decency, morals, and comfort.
Reason and analogy seem to require that a human
being, although the subject of property, should be
so far protected as the public might be injured through him.
For all purposes necessary to enforce the obedience of the slave, and to render him useful as property, the law secures to the master a complete authority over him, and it will not lightly interfere with the relation thus established. It is a more effectual guarantee of his right of property, when the slave is protected from wanton abuse from, those who have no power over him; for it cannot be disputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master's service when he finds himself exposed by the law to the capricious violence of every turbulent man in the community.
If this is not a scrupulous disclaimer of all humane intention in the decision, as far as the slave is concerned, and an explicit declaration that he is protected only out of regard to the comfort of the community, and his property value to his master, it is difficult to see how such a declaration could be made. After all this cool-blooded course of remark, it is somewhat curious to come upon the following certainly most unexpected declaration, which occurs in the very next paragraph:
Mitigated as slavery is by the humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion, which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an anomaly in the system of police which affects them, if the offence stated in the verdict were not indictable.
The reader will please to notice that this remarkable declaration is made of the State of North Carolina. We shall have occasion again to refer to it by and by, when we extract from the statute-book of North Carolina some specimens of these humane laws.
In the same spirit it is decided, under the law of Louisiana, that if an individual
Jourdain v.
Patton, July
term, 1818. 5
Martin's Louis
Rep. 615
injures another's slave so as to make him entirely useless, and the owner recovers from him the full value of the slave, the slave by that act becomes thenceforth the property of the person who injured him. A decision to this effect is given in Wheeler's Law
