But let us examine a case more minutely, remembering the bearing on it of two great foundation principles of slave jurisprudence: namely, that a slave cannot bring a suit in any case, except in a suit for personal freedom, and this in some states must be brought by a guardian; and that a slave cannot bear testimony in any case in which whites are implicated.
Suppose Butler wants to sell Cassy’s child of nine years. There is a statute forbidding to sell under ten years;—what is Cassy to do? She cannot bring suit. Will the state prosecute? Suppose it does,—what then? Butler says the child is ten years old; if he pleases, he will say she is ten and a half, or eleven. What is Cassy to do? She cannot testify; besides, she is utterly in Butler’s power. He may tell her that if she offers to stir in the affair, he will whip the child within an inch of its life; and she knows he can do it, and that there is no help for it;—he may lock her up in a dungeon, sell her on to a distant plantation, or do any other despotic thing he chooses, and there is nobody to say Nay.
How much does the protective statute amount to for Cassy? It may be very well as a piece of advice to the public, or as a decorous expression of opinion; but one might as well try to stop the current of the Mississippi with a bulrush as the tide of trade in human beings with such a regulation.
We think that, by this time, the reader will agree with us, that the less the defenders of slavery say about protective statutes, the better.
[12]. Slavery as It Is; Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. New York, 1839, pp. 52, 53.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EXECUTION OF JUSTICE.
State v. Eliza Rowand.—The “Ægis of Protection” to the Slave’s Life.
“We cannot but regard the fact of this trial as a salutary occurrence.”—Charleston Courier.
Having given some account of what sort of statutes are to be found on the law-books of slavery, the reader will hardly be satisfied without knowing what sort of trials are held under them. We will quote one specimen of a trial, reported in the Charleston Courier of May 6th, 1847. The Charleston Courier is one of the leading papers of South Carolina, and the case is reported with the utmost apparent innocence that there was anything about the trial that could reflect in the least on the character of the state for the utmost legal impartiality. In fact, the Charleston Courier ushers it into public view with the following flourish of trumpets, as something which is forever to confound those who say that South Carolina does not protect the life of the slave: