Slave against Slave by Jeff Forret

Author:Jeff Forret [Forret, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Social Science, Slavery
ISBN: 9780807161128
Google: R_UACwAAQBAJ
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2015-11-16T05:46:16+00:00

The broken relationships inside the quarters that incited such violence also held ramifications for southern slave law. Could enslaved husbands and wives, for instance, testify against the other in court? Whites embroiled in litigation could not be lawfully compelled to give evidence against a spouse. Did the same standard apply to slaves? “[T]he . . . question,” acknowledged one high court in the South, “. . . is one of great interest.” The Supreme Court of North Carolina established the precedent through which almost all southern states ruled the testimony of an enslaved spouse against his or her partner admissible evidence in the eyes of the law. Caswell County bondman Samuel had left his wife Mima but allegedly murdered the man who replaced him as her husband. During Samuel’s trial, Mima was called to testify against her former spouse of ten years and father of her five children. Samuel’s counsel objected, arguing that “cohabitation between slaves, constitutes, in this state, a marriage, or rather such a marriage as produces incompetency to give evidence.” Mutual consent of the parties involved, it was suggested, rather than formal recognition by the law, made the marital union. In its verdict from 1836, the North Carolina Supreme Court disagreed: “The marriage of slaves in this State, consisting of cohabitation merely, by the permission of their owners, does not constitute the relation of husband and wife, so as to attach to them the privileges and disabilities, incident to that relation by the common law.” In assessing the competency of enslaved husbands and wives to testify against the other, Judge Thomas Ruffin explained that “only a marriage de jure, will exclude one of the parties from giving evidence for or against the other”; “a marriage de facto will not.” In short, “the only test of competency is this: are they in fact and in law husband and wife?” Legally, Mima was never Samuel’s wife, regardless of their decade as a couple. Eliminating all doubt as to Mima’s ability to give evidence against Samuel, the Court also noted that her testimony “would undoubtedly be admissible after they had separated, and she had become the wife of another slave.” Enslaved spouses could testify against the other under all circumstances, “even in a capital case.”101

Nearly all other slaveholding states followed the precedent set in North Carolina. The Supreme Court of Alabama referenced the State v. Samuel decision in a similar case one decade later. In 1845, the Dallas County Circuit Court convicted the bondman Smith “for the murder of one Edmund, also a slave.” During that trial, the state, in attempting to establish Smith’s jealousy toward Edmund, called Smith’s “own wife . . . as a witness against him.” Smith’s counsel argued, “All the reasons which exclude the wife from being a witness for and against her husband, apply as well to slaves as free persons, and there is nothing in the condition of slavery which calls for the application of other than the general rules.” Prosecutors challenged this assertion.

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