Dr. Kukla:
Your research seems to indicate that the phrase "give their time" was
understood by the mid-1800's. We are aware of many instances where slaves
were permitted to hire out and keep the wages or were permitted to leave
and go to other locations in Virginia and work. The phrase must have been
understood among slave owners because the Martha Randolph note does not
explain it and obviously she assumes that her daughters will understand
what she means. It makes the question more interesting why it does not
appear in the contemporaneous literature. 

Richard E. Dixon
Editor, Jefferson Notes 
Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
703-691-0770
fax 703-691-0978
fax 703-691-0978


> [Original Message]
> From: Jon Kukla <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 2/28/2007 1:29:07 PM
> Subject: [VA-HIST] Granting of "time"
>
> In connection with some work I’ve been doing, I too was interested in the
> background of the phrase ‘given his/her/their time” referring to an
> informal means of manumission.  A while back I spent a few hours poking
> into it.  Nothing definitive (my notes are below) but it was interesting
> that the first source I found linked Anglo-Am family law to the Institutes
> of Justinian!  Some of my impressions were :
>
> -Roman law had recognized a number of forms of informal manumission from
> slavery
>
> -Roman law about parental authority also drew upon some of the same
concepts
>
> -Perhaps this prompted survival of these phrases into the 19th century
> BOTH in regard to informal manumission and parental authority (reflected
> in passages below)
>
> -Parallel contemporary uses of the phrase “their time” – beyond its
> apparent use by Jefferson to instruct his daughter regarding the informal
> manumission of three of his slaves (at least two of whom were too old for
> manumission under VA law) – included
> -	permitting slaves to hire out their time,
> -	giving slaves Sundays to cultivate their gardens etc.,
> -	in the 1844 Clay speech giving slaves a time off “to go to all
>           political gatherings,” etc.
> -	other usages regarded parental authority and guardianship
>           (and its interesting that the examples I could find are
>            from northern sources.)
>
> For what its worth, the notes I accumulated are below – I’ve retyped the
> phrase “give their time” in all caps to make it stand out.
>
> Jon Kukla
>
> =========
> “There is a survival of the Roman fiduciary guardianship of parents in
> Anglo-American and other modern law where the father or mother has a very
> limited amount of control over children set free or GIVEN THEIR TIME.”
> Charles P. Sherman, “The Debt of the Modern Law of Guardianship to Roman
> Law,” Michigan Law Review, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Dec., 1913), 128.
>      Sherman’s footnote cites Williams [ed], Institutes of Justinian, pp.
> 35, 36 – which is interesting insofar as the several forms of
> informal manumission described in Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic
> Dictionary of Roman Law Transactions of the American Philosophical
> Society, New Ser., Vol. 43, No. 2 (1953), pp. 245-247 seem also to
> have been codified by Justinian.
>
> ==========
> Harry Smith, Fifty Years of Slavery in the United States of America (Grand
> Rapids, Mich. 1891) [Electronic text from Special Collections, University
> of Virginia Library - E444 .S63 1891 ]
>
> Page 161
> “Thousands of people had congregated together to listen [in Louisville, KY
> in 1844] to the famous speech delivered by Cacius M. Clay. Excitement was
> running high all through the south this year. As the speaker was hotly
> engaged in his speech standing on the court house steps, someone in the
> crowd several times interrupted him by calling him, a damned liar. The
> speaker who was well guarded, paid no attention, but continued more
> eloquent. Presently a well dressed young lady was seen wending her way
> through the crowd, and stopping in the centre of the assemblage, exclaimed
> in a clear and modest voice, "I will give any man $500 who will point out
> the individual who called my husband a liar." Silence reigned supreme, and
> a death like stillness prevailed.
> {Page 162}
>         After waiting a few moments and receiving no reply, she again
> repeated her offer. The lady remained standing during the
> remainder of the speech, no one daring to insult her husband
> again. Silence reigned through that great crowd during the balance
> of the speech. After speaking, cheer after cheer rent the air for
> this noble and patriotic lady, for so nobly defending her husband.
> This year was attended with the greatest excitement all through
> the South ever witnessed. The slaves among the rest were GIVEN
> THEIR TIME to go to all political gatherings, carrying flags,
> banners, polk yokes--a year of great jubilee among the colored
> race. Heavy bets were made, as to who should be president, many
> losing their farms. Fine horses, valuable property, was won and
> lost on both sides.”
>
> ==========
> From James D. Schmidt, "Restless Movements Characteristic of Childhood":
> The Legal Construction of Child Labor in Nineteenth-Century
> Massachusetts," Law and History Review 23, no. 2 (Summer 2005)
>
> “In the decades before the Civil War, the Massachusetts court slowly
> worked out a set of contract rules for children's wage work. Doing so
> required resolution of a critical contradiction, both in the rules
> themselves and in the broader legalities of childhood and labor. On the
> one hand, received custom and precedent granted fathers an absolute right
> to their children's wages and stipulated that minors themselves could not
> make binding contracts for anything more than support or education.
> Consequently, young people could not enter the labor market as their own
> agents unless they had been "emancipated" from the control of their
> fathers, or "GIVEN THEIR TIME" in the parlance of the day. Bargains made
> by unemancipated minors were automatically void, or at least, voidable. On
> the other hand, developing labor law held all labor contracts to be
> binding, authorizing employers to withhold wages from workers who quit
> without permission. This legal contradiction raised fundamental questions
> about the legitimacy of children's work outside apprenticeship and about
> the larger issue of rights and obligations of children in a capitalist
> society. By 1860, the court had resolved the legal contradictions by
> fashioning two new rules about children's labor contracts. One, "implied
> emancipation" (or "implied assent") supplied a fictional way around
> parental control of minors' earnings. A second rule allowed minors to
> break their agreements at-will while holding their employers bound to
> their half of the bargain. In reaching this conclusion, the court began to
> erode children's legal incapacity, increasingly envisioning and
> legitimating young people as agents in a capitalist labor market.”
>
> Schmidt’s footnote to this paragraph cites : Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage
> to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave
> Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. ch. 5 and
> Fabian Witt, "Rethinking the Nineteenth-Century Employment Contract,
> Again," Law and History Review 18 (2000): 9–10.
>
> ==============
> From Edward D. Neill and J. Fletcher Williams "History of Dakota County
> and the City of Hastings, including the Explorers and Pioneers of
> Minnesota , and Outlines of the History of Minnesota". (Minneapolis by
> North Star Publishing Company, 1881), p. 421:
>
> “F. K. Balch [of Lakeville, Minnesota] was born in New Hampshire, in 1847.
> He came with his parents to St. Anthony, Minnesota, in 1855, and on
> reaching the age of twenty years, was GIVEN HIS TIME by his father. Three
> years he gave his attention to lumbering, then to agricultural pursuits;
> afterwards worked at railroad grading for different parties until locating
> at Lakeville, Dakota county, in 1875. Purchasing a one-half interest in
> the elevator with Mr. Perkins, he has since continued in that business. In
> 1880, he and Miss Etta M. Perkins were united in marriage.”
>
> =================
> From Spencer Elsworth "The  Record of Olden Times or Fifty Year on the
> Prairie" (Lacon, IL, 1880)
>
> “Jarvice G. Evans, pastor of the M. E. church at Wenona, was born in Evans
> township, Marshall County, December 19, 1833. The sons and daughters of
> Joshua Evans were all reared in toil. Joshua Evans allowed no idlers about
> his home. So, at the age of 16, J.G. was given his time and allowed to do
> for himself, that he could secure a greatly coveted education. His father
> could have helped him, but he did not think it best to do so, any farther
> than to GIVE HIM HIS TIME, believing that it would be better for the boy
> to work his own way, which he did, first by farming and afterward by
> teaching to get money to pay expenses while going to school. J.G. received
> his education at the Peoria Wesleyan Seminary, Judson College, Mt.
> Palatine, and at the Ohio Wesleyan University. “
>
> ==============================================
> Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
> Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
> 1250 Red Hill Road
> Brookneal, Virginia 24528
> www.redhill.org
> Phone 434-376-2044 or 800-514-7463
>
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>
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>
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