“With the consent of their masters slaves may marry * * * but whilst in a state of slavery it cannot produce any civil effect, because slaves are deprived of all civil rights.” (Judge Mathews.)
“A slave cannot even contract matrimony, the association which takes place among slaves and is called marriage, being properly designated by the word contubernium, a relation which has no sanctity, and to which no civil rights are attached.” (Judge Stroud.)
“A slave has never maintained an action against the violator of his bed.” (Daniel Dulany, Att’y Gen. Md.)
“Slaves were not entitled to the conditions of matrimony, and therefore they had no relief in cases of adultery.” (Dr. Taylor.)
“Marriage is a civil ordinance they cannot enjoy. Our laws do not recognize this relation as existing among them, and of course, do not enforce by any sanction, the observance of its duties. Indeed, until slavery waxeth old and tendeth to decay, there cannot be any legal recognition of the marriage rite, or the enforcement of its consequent duties. For all the regulations on this subject would limit the master’s absolute right of property in the slaves. In his disposal of them he could no longer be at liberty to consult merely his own interests. He could no longer separate the wife and the husband to suit the convenience or interest of the purchaser.” (Address of the Synod of Ky.)
The laws intend to make slaves absolute property, and hence no relation is legalized which would detract from the value of that property. The interest of the owner alone is consulted. These laws, horrible as they appear, are entirely consistent with chattel slavery. And the general practice upon these laws comes up fully to their spirit. Whenever the convenience, interest or passion of a master requires it, slaves are sold and scattered abroad without the slightest regard to those dear and sacred connections, which they regard, and which God, no doubt, regards as marriage. In newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves it is frequently stated that the fugitive property was bought at a certain place “where he has a wife,” and the probability is that he is “lurking about that place.” An advertisement in a New Orleans paper, after describing the slave Charles, as “six feet high,” “copper color,” rather “pleasing appearance,” adds, in order that the pursuers may have some clue to his whereabouts, “it is more than probable that he will make his way to Tennessee, as he has a wife now living there.”
Another advertises the runaway “Ned,” of “copper color, full forehead.” “Ned,” continues the notice, “was purchased in Richmond of Mr. Goodin, and has a wife in that vicinity.”
Another describes a runaway woman, and suggests that she may be lurking about “in the country where her husband is owned.”
These are very natural suggestions. A husband, though a slave, and bound to his wife by no legal tie, is not unfrequently to the slave wife all that husband means, and if that wife escape from her unfeeling oppressors, who have carried her away to a distant State, it is quite natural that she should bend her steps toward the partner of her bosom, and subject herself to incredible hardships and dangers that she might see his face once more, and unburden to him her sorrow-ladened heart.
And that wife, though a slave, unprotected by the laws, driven by the shameful lash, insulted, disgraced and neglected, is a wife still. And when “Ned,” as he is called, runs away, it is quite natural that he should, impelled by a husband’s love, seek out the hut where years before he had been suddenly separated from her. These advertisements for husbands who are supposed to be “lurking about” in search of their wives, and of wives hunting for their husbands, tell a sad tale. What husband or wife can read them without deep sorrow?