V. The laws recognized no obligation upon the owners of slaves, to furnish them with food and clothing, or to take care of them in sickness.
The extent to which this deficiency in the Roman law has been supplied in the American, by “protective acts,” has been exhibited above.[[13]]
VI. Slaves could have no property but by the sufferance of their master, for whom they acquired everything, and with whom they could form no engagements which could be binding on him.
The following chapter will show how far American legislation is in advance of that of the Romans, in that it makes it a penal offence on the part of the master to permit his slave to hold property, and a crime on the part of the slave to be so permitted. For the present purpose, we give an extract from the Civil code of Louisiana, as quoted by Judge Stroud:
Civil Code, Article 35. Stroud, p. 22.
A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but what must belong to his master.
Wh’ler’s Law of Slavery, p. 246. State v. Mann.
According to Judge Ruffin, a slave is “one doomed in his own person, and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits.”
With reference to the binding power of engagements between master and slave, the following decisions from the United States Digest are in point (7, p. 449):
Gist v. Toohey, 2 Rich. 424.