"No, tain't."
"Wasn't that your old master's name?" asked the sheriff roughly.
"Co'se it war," was the reply.
"Well, then, ain't it yours too?"
"No, it ain't."
"Well, you just ask the gentleman if that ain't so," said the sheriff, motioning to the chairman of the board.
"Well," said that officer, with a peculiar smile, "I do not know that there is any law compelling a freedman to adopt his former master's name. He is without name in the law, a pure nullius filius—nobody's son. As a slave he had but one name. He could have no surname, because he had no family. He was arraigned, tried, and executed as 'Jim' or 'Bill' or 'Tom.' The volumes of the reports are full of such cases, as The State vs. 'Dick' or 'Sam.' The Roman custom was for the freedman to take the name of some friend, benefactor, or patron. I do not see why the American freedman has not a right to choose his own surname."
"That is not the custom here," said the sheriff, with some chagrin, he having begun the controversy.
"Very true," replied the chairman; "the custom—and a very proper and almost necessary one it seems—is to call the freedman by a former master's name. This distinguishes individuals. But when the freedman refuses to acknowledge the master's name as his, who can impose it on him? We are directed to register the names of parties, and while we might have the right to refuse one whom we found attempting to register under a false name, yet we have no power to make names for those applying. Indeed, if this man insists that he has but one name, we must, for what I can see, register him by that alone."
His associates looked wise, and nodded acquiescence in the views thus expressed.