The long arm of the law: slavery and the supreme court in antebellum Louisiana, 1809-1862 (law, southern, Afro-American)
Description
The legal contradiction implicit in the term 'human property' was never resolved. This is significant in all of the slaveholding South, but especially in Louisiana. It is important to remember that the French legal heritage influenced the citizens of the Pelican State to strongly resist the Americanizing influence of the common law, specifically because its implied rights were not tangible enough to make antebellum Louisianians feel protected by the law. They clung to their civil law with its complex, detailed codes as though their very liberty depended on it. It is ironic that the common law system extended greater protection to slaves than did Louisiana's civil law tribunals. Seen through the lens of court cases, Louisiana falls far short of the supposedly more enlightened slave code that historians ascribed to it Given the Louisiana mania for codification, the ambiguity of the Louisiana Supreme Court in dealing with slaves on the one hand as property, on the other as persons, and at times as both is quite significant and indicates a great deal about the moral posture of the court. For men who considered themselves to hold high Christian principles, treating slaves solely as property was abhorrent, even though the Black Code clearly stated that they were not only property, but immovables. The wording of the Civil Code reflects the ambiguity in the law: 'Slaves, though movable by their nature, are considered as immovables by the operation of law'; the Black Code refers to them as real estate. However, if the court had treated slaves solely as people, then the very institution of human bondage could not exist, destroying millions of dollars in slave assets. The ambiguous stance of the court in dealing with slaves was no accident. It was contrived to allow men who considered themselves moral to support an institution that was immoral. The law reflects the intrinsic conflicts within Louisiana society as a whole. Most Louisianians became convinced that slavery alone could allow economic prosperity. And Louisianians, despite their unique heritage, were not less susceptible to the lure of gain than were other southerners of English background and common law tradition