Two statements concerning slave trials require some correction. This correction holds for Virginia trials. Others may wish to comment on other colonies' and states' variations. First, criminal trials of slaves protected owners' rights to their human property. In the process, slaves could benefit from the procedural and evidentiary standards that were supposed to be honored in such trials. Second, strictly speaking, slaves were not allowed to sue for their freedom. Why, then, all the freedom suits? That's because the the person's preexisting status was the obvious
matter adjudicated in such trials. If the freedom suit resulted in recognition of the plaintiff's freedom, then a free person had sued. If the verdict was that the person suing for her or his freedom was not free, then that plaintiff had had no right to sue. Hence much of the testimony in freedom suits focused on actions that may or may not have manumitted the person in question before the freedom suit was tried.

I'm sure Paul Finkelman can comment on the way this freedom suit process affected Dred Scott.

Philip Schwarz
Virginia Commonwealth University

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html