Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians, with Illustrations and Speeches

by Unknown

But having conformed ourselves to a given and required degradation, to an enjoined submission, we are ready by our very nature and habits to resist any degradation or submission greatly beyond that which we have learned to acquiesce in as a duty. When a slave is required to bare his back to the rod, he does it because it is usual; but when he is required to stand as a target for his master's gun, he is startled—no idea of duty sustains the requirement and the unquelled portion of his instinct rouses his passions to resistance.

Human institutions are inadequate to the task of settling a condition in society which shall impart to its members the highest perfection of philosophic fortitude and the lowest degradation of animal existence—which shall blend into harmony the reasonable man and the passionless brute.

When it is declared that a slave is a reasonable or human creature, and that he is the subject of felony at common law; that murder and manslaughter both may be perpetrated on his person, that himself may commit both, it would seem to result that he was acknowledged to possess the infirmities common to his species. That they must be palliated in some cases, even when the master is the victim, I hope I have satisfactorily shown. And now I come to the deliberate conclusion that the only difference caused by the relation consists in the fact that there are some acts of the slave which constitute provocation that would not if done by a freeman; some which would constitute provocation to the master which would not to a stranger; and on the contrary, that a slave is not permitted to be provoked at many acts done by a stranger freeman which would constitute a lawful provocation if done by a fellow-slave; and that a great variety of acts done by the master shall not be sufficient cause of provocation which, if done by a stranger, would be so deemed, but that in not a single relation in which the slave is placed by law is he debarred in every case of violence to his person from feeling and pleading a legal provocation.

If I have been successful in showing that the deceased greatly abused his authority by shooting at the prisoner, and that the act was calculated to produce a resentment not unreasonably conceived, the inference in law is irresistible that if the prisoner, immediately on being shot, had turned and slain the deceased, it could not have been more than manslaughter; and the only important point now remaining to be discussed is whether the interval of time between the reception of the injury and the commission of the homicide enhances the guilt of the deed. The law would be vain and nugatory as a rule of action if it should allow that the passions may be justly provoked and yet refuse to allow a reasonable time for their subsidence. When it says that reason may be dethroned it is never guilty of the solecism of holding the judgment accountable till reason can be reseated. Whether there may have been sufficient time for that important operation of the faculties, is a question often dependent on the circumstances of the case. The continuance of the original exciting causes and the addition of subsequent stimulants being necessarily calculated to prevent the restoration of reason, may prolong the time till they cease to exist; nor even then, at the very moment of their cessation, does the law demand that the bosom shall return to its calm and tranquillity. Such an instantaneous repose is no more to be looked for, in the tempest of the passions, than it is in the storms of the ocean, whose angry waves are often seen to run mountain high long after the dark cloud hath passed away, and the raving wind hath fled from the conflict, leaving its enraged victim heaving with agitation beneath a tranquil and sunny heaven.

The time in this case was but six or eight minutes, and the wound calculated to produce death. If the exciting cause of provocation had here ceased, it would be a rigid and unnatural rule, to require, at the expiration of this short period, the presence of a responsible judgment; for it is perfectly apparent, that in proportion to the severity of the injury received, will be the length of time which nature demands to adjust the shaken balance of the mind. The prisoner had much cause to suspect that his wound would prove fatal; and no man, either bond or free, laboring under the excitement incident to such a situation, could, so soon, have quelled his fury and recalled his scattered senses. But these few moments were not allowed to be moments of rest and thought to the wounded man. They were moments of flight and active pursuit; flight, by a man, dangerously shot, his wounds bleeding in profusion, and chafed into agony by the friction of his clothes and the motions of his body; pursuit by a man who had meditated and attempted a deadly injury; who called to his aid three more men, ready to execute his purposes, whatever they might be, and who was well aware of the mangled condition of his victim, and who, under the full conviction of his shot proving fatal, cheered his comrades of the chase, by the unfeeling exclamation, "He can't run far." Let it be remembered, too, that the prisoner, during this space of time, had run a distance of five or six hundred yards; that he was overtaken by a man who, in moments perfectly cool, when compared with those in which he captured the prisoner, had not hesitated to shoot him at a distance of a few rods, and by what logic can we arrive at the conclusion, either that the prisoner had enjoyed opportunity to regain his judgment, or that he had not every reason to apprehend from the deceased the finishing stroke to his life? How could he be trusted, with every passion inflamed to madness, who in cooler times had violated every duty as a man, had deliberately prepared himself to take the life of his fellow-man, and, as a superintendent, had, for trifling cause, attempted to destroy valuable property entrusted to his care? In no part of the slave's conduct does he evince a disposition to seek a conflict. He takes every occasion to avoid it. When he is headed, he does not hesitate to turn his course, and flee from an encounter.

Upon the whole, I cannot bring my mind to the conclusion, that this case is of higher grade than manslaughter, if of that; and whatever may be the prisoner's fate, I am free to declare, and with the most sincere candor, that I do not recognize in his conduct the moral depravity of a murderer, nor any high degree of inaptitude to the condition of slavery. He was disobedient, it is true, and ran to avoid chastisement. Three-fourths of our slaves occasionally do this. He slew his overseer, it is true, after having been dangerously shot, pursued and overtaken. The tamest and most domestic brute will do likewise. And I feel that if he must expiate the deed under the gallows, he will be a victim, not of his own abandoned depravity, but a sacrifice offered to the policy which regulates the relation of slavery among us. But before he is sacrificed, it may be useful to inquire into that policy. The interests of society demand that it should be fixed, and permanently fixed, that the master may know the extent of his authority, and the slave prepare himself to its accommodation.

No question can be more delicate, or attended with so many bad consequences if settled in error. It would be next to impossible for the judiciary to adjust this relation adversely to any strong and deliberate opinion entertained by the public mind. The momentum of this feeling, acting through the juries of the country and the spirit of the Legislature, would be too powerful, successfully to be encountered by the courts. And in whatsoever decided current it might run, it would, finally, bear into its channel all interpretations of the law.

By a timely and judicious administration of the law, however, in relation to this subject, the courts may effect much in the formation of public opinion, and at this time they may exert the opportunities afforded by their situation, in a most happy manner to impart fixedness and stability to those principles which form the true basis of the policy. They have of late frequently announced from the bench the progression of humanity in this relation, and their clear conviction that the condition of the slave was rapidly advancing in amelioration, under the benign influence of Christian precept and the benevolent auspices of improving civilization. It is believed that these convictions were founded in truth, and the various laws on the statute books bring ample testimony to the fact. As far as slavery has been the subject of legislation for the last ninety years, it has been undergoing a gradual revolution in favor of the slave, and it is confidently asserted, not adverse to the best interests of the master, or of the security of the public. In a popular government we can nowhere look for more correct information of the state of the public mind, upon a subject deeply interesting to the people at large, than in their laws. The history of the legislation of the State for the last century on this subject, during which more than a dozen principal acts have been passed at intervals, is a history of a gradual progression in the improvement of the condition of the slave, in the protection of his person, his comforts, and those rights not necessary to be surrendered to his master. The length of time in which this evidence of a common sentiment has been continuing in one course, is irrefutable testimony of its being the true and deliberate sense of the community. Very lately the whole subject came before the Legislature; and though it was at a time when the public mind was inflamed and alarmed at a recent and yet reeking massacre, they did not relax the laws made for their protection, nor render their lives or persons less secure. From the Act of 1741, which put the life of the slave, on trial, in the hands of three justices and four freeholders, down to that of 1831, which secures, beyond doubt, the right of the slave to a jury of slave owners, there will be found, without a solitary retrograde, one continued, persevering, and unbroken series of laws, raising the slave higher and higher in the scale of moral being. To the period of 1794, the character of the acts, though they are not numerous, nor strongly marked with exclusive benefit to the slave, is evincive of an intent to afford protection, where before it was weak.

It is not possible that there can be found, anywhere, a plainer manifestation of a decided intent to raise the consideration and standing of the slave than is expressed in these acts of the Legislature. Will the Court disappoint this unequivocal intention? Will they rebuke the spirit of the age and strike back this unfortunate race of men, advancing from the depths of misery and wretchedness to a higher ground under the shield of so much legislation enacted in their behalf?

Our laws furnish incontestable evidence of what is the enlightened sentiment of the State. The history of other nations affords a body of luminous information to instruct us what that sentiment should be; and I feel no small pleasure in believing that the legislative policy of our past and present day most fully accords with that course which the long tried experience of bygone ages has distinctly marked out as the wiser and better one.