Anne Pemberton wrote:

> Yes, but I also find many situations where slaves were killed without
> trial for even lesser sins than poisoning the master. There were no
> consequences for the murder of the slave. May I suggest reading at
> least the first ten chapters of Frederick Douglass' Autobiography at
> http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/ ....
>
>                                         Anne
>
Paul Finkelman is far more of a legal historian of slavery than I am and
he mentions that slave trials were all over the board. Indeed, the whole
matter has been a subject of a great interest in slavery studies in the
'70s - '90s. Defining in law the peculiar status of slaves--were they
property or were they people when it came to the criminal law ?--became
a big problem for antebellum southern jurist like Thomas Ruffin of the
NC Supreme Court. Genovese in __Roll Jordan, Roll__has a good chapter on
the matter. A remarkable study of a slave trial is Milton McLauren's
_Celia_. Celia was a Missouri slave woman in the 1850s  whose master, a
Virginian who had moved to Missouri, had raped and abused her. One
night, unable to stand him any more, she killed him and chopped his body
into pieces and burned them in the fireplace. Celia was arrested and
tried in court. The best lawyer in the county defended her and, given
the limitations on her testimony, gave her an excellent defense and
appealed her case to the state's highest court. But of course she was
hanged.

Jim Hershman

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