As Property, Slaves may be seized and sold to pay the Debts of their Owners, while living, or for the settlement of their Estates, after their decease.

     THIS is evident from the very nature of property, especially of chattels personal, as well as from the fact that slaves may be bought and sold, and pawned or mortgaged for the security of debts. A pawn or mortgage is of the nature of barter. If not redeemed, it becomes a barter in the end. And barter is only one form of purchase and sale. Whatever may be bought and sold may be bartered, consequently mortgaged; and, if unredeemed, seized, taken possession of.

     The very definition of slave property, as cited in Chapter I., specifies this incident. They “may be sold, transferred, and pawned.” They are “chattels personal, to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever.”

     “The slave, being a personal chattel, is at all times liable to be sold absolutely, or mortgaged, or leased, at the will of his master. He may also be sold by process of law for the satisfaction of the debts of a

living, or the debts and bequests of a deceased master, at the suit of creditors or legatees.” (Stroud’s Sketch, pp. 25, 51.)

     “If a slave sold, remains with the vender, he is liable to be seized for his debts.” (Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, p. 54.)

     “Slaves are considered as property, and in most of the States they are considered as chattels personal. They are therefore subject to those rules and regulations which society has established for the purchase and sale, and transmission from one to another, of that species of property. They therefore may be mortgaged as personal property, or are the subjects of a qualified or conditional sale, to suit the wants of the owner or purchaser of them. They are declared to be personal estate by the Revised Code of Mississippi, 379; Revised Code of Virginia, vol. I., pp. 431-47. Indeed, they are considered the subjects of mortgage in all the States by custom, and which exists in many of the States by express statutory provisions.” By the Black Code of Louisiana, vol. I., Dig., p. 102, sect. 10, it is declared that slaves shall be reputed and considered real estate; shall be, as such, subject to be mortgaged, according to the rules prescribed by law, and they shall be seized and sold as real estate. (Ib., Note, pp. 164-5.)

     “Slaves may be sold by creditors for debts of their owners, in all the States but Louisiana, where they cannot be separated from the land.” (1 Martin’s Dig., 612, Act of July, 1806; cited in Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, p. 41.)

     “The children of a female slave mortgaged, born after the execution of the mortgage, are as much liable to the demand of the mortgagee as the slave herself.” (Ib., p. 167.)

     In contrast with the preceding, we present the following:

     “Plantation slaves, not only in the Spanish and Portuguese, but in the French colonies also, are real estate, and attached to the soil they cultivate, partaking therewith all the restraints upon voluntary alienation to which the possessor of the land is there liable, and they cannot be seized or sold by creditors for the satisfaction of the debts of the owner. It has already been stated that by the Code Noir, art. 47, the husband cannot be sold without the wife, nor the parents without the children. Sales made contrary to this regulation, by process of law, under seizure for debts, are declared void. (See Stephens’ Slavery, 68-9; Stroud’s Sketch, p. 53.)

     It is evident that this feature of liability to seizure for the master’s debt is, in many cases, more terrific to the slave than that which subjects him to the master’s voluntary sale. The slave may be satisfied that his master is not willing to sell him—that it is not for his interest or convenience to do so. He may be conscious that he is, in a manner, necessary to his master or mistress, or that, being a favorite and tried servant, they would not sell him at any price. He may even confide in their Christian benevolence and moral principle, or promise that they would not sell him, especially that they would not thus separate

him from his wife and children. But all this affords him no security or ground of assurance that his master’s creditor will not seize him, or his wife or his children, against even his master’s entreaties. Such occurrences are too common to be unnoticed, or out of mind.

     “WILL be sold, the following PROPERTY, to wit One CHILD, by the name of James, levied on as the property of Gabriel Gunn.”

     Neither the Court, the sheriff, the plaintiff, the defendant, nor the negro girl, appear to have been instructed in the literature which assures willing dupes that the Slave Code is obsolete—a dead letter.

     Here, again, the “chattel principle” appears not to have been regarded as “a mere metaphysical, speculative abstraction,” as some would persuade us to believe it is.

     “NOTICE is hereby given that the undersigned, pursuant to a certain Deed of Trust, will, on Thursday, the 12th day of April next, expose to sale at the Court-House, to the highest bidder, for cash, the following negro slaves, to wit: Fanny, aged about twenty-eight years; Mary, aged about seven years; Amanda, aged about three months; Wilson, aged about nine months. Said slaves to be sold for the satisfaction of the debt secured in said Deed of Trust.

     The “legal relation” was here defined and exemplified, as likewise in the following:

     “The times are truly alarming here. Many plantations are entirely stripped of their negroes and horses, by the marshal or sheriff. Suits are multiplying,” &c.

     Truly alarming times, indeed, for slave mothers and their babes-for slave wives and their husbands. But of their alarms the writer, the publisher, and the readers generally, it may be presumed, thought no more than they did of the alarms of the “horses” associated and seized with them.

     In all this we have only the natural workings of

the “legal relation;” the legality of which was understood and enforced by the sheriff. It were idle to talk of his act or of the act of the creditors as an abuse of the relation. The relation is that of owner and chattels, and nothing else. It would be absurd (not to say dishonest) for the law to sanction such a relation, and then leave the rights unprotected which the relation implies. Were it true that such a relation existed, and that it was truly legal and valid, there would be manifest injustice to the attaching creditor, as well as to the voluntary slave vender, in the Code Noir. The truth is, no such “legal relation” can be valid; and to this fact, the Code Noir gives its attestation, by its veto upon the exercise of its involved rights.

     We dismiss also this feature of the Slave Code, with the remark that, in respect to it, we find the people to be no better than their laws, and their usages no worse than “the legal relation” that gives sanction to them.