[267] Revised Statutes of North Carolina passed by the General Assembly at the Session of 1836–7, xxxiv. 74, cxi. 27, vol. i. 209, 578.
[268] Clay, Digest of the Laws of Alabama, p. 543.
[269] Code of Virginia, cxcviii. 31 sq. Stroud, op. cit. p. 142.
There is yet another point in which the master’s power was restricted in a most unusual way: in many cases he was not allowed to liberate his slave, or formidable obstacles were put in the way of manumission. Thus, in North Carolina a slave could formerly not be enfranchised except for meritorious services;[270] but this enactment was altered by the Revised Statutes of 1836–1837, according to which any emancipation granted to any slave “shall be upon the express condition, that he, she or they will leave the State, within ninety days from the granting thereof, and never will return within the State afterwards.”[271] The Civil Code of Louisiana required that a slave, to be emancipated, should have attained the age of thirty years and behaved well at least for four years preceding the emancipation, unless, indeed, the slave had saved the life of his master or of one of his children, in which case he might be set free at any age;[272] and, according to a statute of 1852, the emancipated slave should be sent out of the United States within twelve months after his emancipation.[273] In several other States manumission was likewise hampered by various regulations;[274] and throughout the British West Indies there were restraints on manumission prior to the Emancipation Act.[275] By an act passed in Saint Christopher in the year 1802, a tax of £1,000 was imposed on the manumission of any slave who was not a native of, or had not resided for two years within, the island, whilst natives or residents might be enfranchised at half that price. But the authors of this act went further still. They considered that a master, though unwilling to pay £500 or £1,000 for the legal enfranchisement of a slave, might, during his own life, make him or her practically free by not exercising his own rights as master. Hence they enacted “that if any proprietor of a slave should, by any contract in writing or otherwise, dispense with the slave’s service, or should be proved before a justice of peace not to have exercised any right of ownership over such slave, and maintained him or her at his own expense, within a month, the slave should be publicly sold at vendue by the provost marshall; and should become the property of the purchaser, and the purchase-money should be paid into the colonial treasury.”[276] In St. Vincents one hundred pounds sterling was required to be paid into the treasury for each slave sought to be manumitted,[277] whilst in Barbados a person minded to manumit a slave should pay £50 to the churchwarden of the parish in which he resided.[278] Very different were the Spanish laws on the subject of manumission. According to a law of 1528 a negro slave who had served a certain length of time was entitled to his liberty upon the payment of a certain sum, not less than twenty marks of gold, the exact amount to be settled by the royal authorities.[279] In 1540 a law was issued to the effect that “if any negro, or negress, or any other persons reputed slaves, should publicly demand their liberty, they should be heard, and justice be done to them, and care be taken that they should not on that account be maltreated by their masters.”[280] Nay, a slave who wished to change his master and could prevail on any other person to buy him by appraisement, could demand and compel such a transfer,[281] and a master who treated his slaves inhumanly could be by the judge deprived of them.[282] In most of the British colonies and American Slave States, on the other hand, the slave had no legal right to obtain a change of master when cruel treatment made it necessary for his relief or preservation.[283] The exceptions to this rule[284] were few and of little practical value.
[270] Stroud, op. cit. p. 233.
[271] Revised Statutes of North Carolina, cxi. 58, vol. i. 585.
[272] Morgan, Civil Code of Louisiana, art. 185 sq., p. 30 sqq.
[273] Ibid. Stat. 18th March, 1852, §1, p. 29.
[274] Brevard, op. cit. ii. 255 sq. (South Carolina). Prince, op. cit. p. 787 (Georgia). Stroud, op. cit. p. 231 (Alabama). Alden and van Hoesen, Digest of the Laws of Mississippi, p. 761. Haywood and Cobbs, Statute Laws of the State of Tennessee, i. 327 sq.
[275] Cobb, op. cit. p. 282.