But given a penal system in which imprisonment was the principal feature, it was not advantageous to the slave-owner or to the State to give prison sentences to slaves. And here the ghost of benefit of clergy would not down. In place of imprisonment the slave was usually corporally punished. In the language of the Alabama statute of 1807, "when any negro or mulatto whatsoever shall be convicted of any offense not punishable with death by this act, ... he or she shall be burnt in the hand by the sheriff in open court or suffer such other corporal punishment as the court shall think fit to inflict." Likewise Mississippi in 1822 enacted that "if any negro or mulatto slave was convicted of felony not punishable with death, such negro or mulatto should be burnt in the hand and suffer such other corporal punishment as the court should think fit to inflict, except when he or she shall be convicted of a second offense of the same nature, in which case such negro or mulatto slave shall suffer death." Most interesting are the laws of two States in which benefit of clergy was not provided for. According to the Black Code of Louisiana when slaves were charged with crimes punishable with death or hard labor for life, the jury might at its discretion commute the death penalty and inflict a lesser punishment. In Florida a slave guilty of crime punishable with death might at the discretion of the court suffer instead a whipping not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, have his ears nailed to a post and stand one hour, and be burned in the hand.
In the light of the documents quoted and the statutes cited the statement so frequently made that benefit of clergy disappeared in America at the time of the Revolution, and the dictum of an Indiana judge that "it is unknown to our laws" (I Blackford 63), can not be taken at their face value.
Wm. K. Boyd
Trinity College,
Durham, N. C.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] These documents were collected by Prof. Wm. K. Boyd, of Trinity College, Durham, North Carolina.
COMMUNICATIONS
The following from Mr. A. P. Vrede of Paramaribo, Surinam, Dutch Guiana, South America, will be informing and interesting to persons interested in missions as a factor in the uplift of the race: