Slavery is upheld by suppressing the testimony of its Victims.

     “A SLAVE cannot be a witness against a white person, either in a civil or criminal cause.” (Stroud’s Sketch, p. 65.)

     “It is an inflexible and universal rule of slave law, founded in one or two States upon usage, in others sanctioned by express legislation, THAT THE TESTIMONY OF A COLORED PERSON, WHETHER BOND OR FREE, CANNOT BE RECEIVED AGAINST A WHITE PERSON. (Ib., p. 27. Same in Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, 193-5.)

     In Virginia, the Act of Assembly is as follows: “Any negro or mulatto, bond or free, shall be a good witness in pleas of the Commonwealth, for or against negroes or mulattoes, bond or free, or in civil pleas where free negroes or mulattoes shall alone be parties, and in no other cases whatever.” (1 Revised Code, 422.)

     Similar in Missouri. (Missouri Laws, 600.) And

in Mississippi. (Revised Code, 372.) And in Kentucky. (2 Littell and Swigert’s Digest, 1150.) And in Alabama. (Toulmin’s Dig., 627.) And in Maryland. (Maryland Laws, Act of 1717, chap. 13, sects. 2, 3; and Act of 1751, chap. 14, sect. 4.) And in North Carolina and Tennessee. (Act of 1777, chap. 2, sect. 42.) And in the free State of OHIO. (Act of January 25, 1807.)

     In South Carolina and in Louisiana there are enactments which, in direct allusion to this feature of their laws, and reciting in a preamble, that “Whereas many cruelties may be committed on slaves because no white person may be present to give evidence of the same, unless some method be provided for the better discovery of the offense,” &c., &c., Be it enacted, &c., &c.: The only remedy provided is, that “when no white person shall be present,” or, being present; shall refuse to testify, “the owner or other person having charge of such slave [who shall have “suffered in life, limb, member,” &c.] shall be deemed guilty and punished,” “unless such owner or other person, &c., can make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, OR SHALL, BY HIS OWN OATH, clear and exculpate himself;” and the Court may administer the oath and “acquit the offender, if clear proof of the offense be not made by two witnesses at least.” (2 Brevard’s Dig., 242.)

     Judge Stroud (in his Sketch, &c., p. 76) considers this “a modification of the former law, not for the protection of the slave, BUT FOR THE ESPECIAL BENEFIT OF A CRUEL MASTER OR OVERSEER.”

     In most of the slaveholding States, the owners of slaves are required by law “to keep at least one white person on each plantation to which a certain number of slaves is attached.” (Stroud, p. 67.) This indicates the previous absence of white persons, and the consequent lack of white witnesses. Whether the law was ostensibly for the remedy of that defect, or whether it was for the greater security against the slaves, does not appear. It is hardly credible that a white person is employed for the former object. And as most of the present overseers are whites, it may be inferred that the design was to discountenance the employment of slaves or other colored persons as overseers. Be this as it may, a white overseer answers the requisitions of the law, and he could hardly be a witness against himself, though specially authorized to exculpate himself by his own oath!

     Chief Justice Ottley, of St. Vincent’s, in answer to Parliamentary inquiries proposed to him in 1791, said “The only instances in which their [the slaves’] persons appear to be protected by the letter of the law, are in cases of murder, dismemberment, and mutilation; and in these cases, as the evidence of slaves is never admitted against a white man, the difficulty of establishing the facts is so great, that white men are, in a manner, put beyond the reach of the law.”

     Sir William Young, Governor of Tobago in 1811, and an advocate of slavery, said: “I think the slaves

have no protection. In this, as I doubt not in every other island, there are laws for the protection of the slaves, and good ones, but circumstances in the administration of whatever law, render it a dead letter. When the intervention of the law is most required, it will have the least effect; as, in most cases, where a vindictive and cruel master has care to commit the most atrocious cruelties, even to murder his slave, NO FREE PERSON BEING PRESENT TO WITNESS THE ACT,” &c., &c.

     Many others, holding official stations in the British West Indies during the existence of slavery, have testified to the same general fact, the insufficiency of all laws for the protection of slaves, in consequence of rejecting slave testimony. (Vide Stephen’s West Indian Slavery, pp. 168-9.)

     The case is too plain to require either testimony or argument. A community or a Government that could tolerate such rejection of testimony—the testimony of the defenseless against those holding and daily exercising despotic power over them must be resolutely bent on oppressing instead of protecting them.

     Yet the reasonableness of the rule is beyond question, if the “innocent legal relation” is to be pre served. It would be an absurdity for chattels to come into Court and bear testimony against their owners! They could not be “chattels, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.” They could not remain chattels at all. The power to testify against their owners and overseers would imply the

right of protection from assaults by them. “The slave, to REMAIN a slave,” said Judge Ruffin, “must be sensible that there is NO APPEAL from his master.” Allow slaves to testify, and the hitherto unimagined secrets of the Bastile would explode like an earthquake. Universal humanity would unite in one general crusade, and break down the whole fabric.

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