Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...A 6812. "Ibid.. 1840, A6821. "Code (1849), P. 754; Code (1860), p. 816. 45 Acts, 1839, p. 24. "See a petition to the legislature which represents that both free negroes and dogs kill sheep as they prowl through the neighborhood (MS. Petitions, Chesterfield County, 1854, A4321). "Acts, 1847-1848; House Journal, 1847-1848, p. 436. "Acts, 1857-1858, p. 152. out the State passed the House of Delegates in 1848, hut failed to receive the approval of the Senate.52 The laws of Virginia extended their protection not only, as we have already seen, to the property of the free negro, but, as we shall now see, to his life and liberty. In any case in which the freedom' of a negro was disputed the burden of proof was upon the negro to show that he was free. Unlike the recognized principle of English law which demands that every man be regarded as innocent till his guilt is established by evidence, a free negro taken up and deprived of his liberty as being a slave had, in order to procure his release, to produce evidence that he was not a slave. In 1806 George Wythe, chancellor of the State of Virginia, gave as grounds for decreeing the freedom of three persons claimed as slaves that freedom is the birthright of every human being. He laid it down as a general proposition that whenever one person claims to hold another in slavery, the onus probandi lies on the claimant. This application of the Declaration of Independence was completely repudiated by the supreme court of appeals when the case came'up for final review.58 Judge Tucker, who spoke for a unanimous court, asserted that the burden of proof is not upoA the claimant, but upon the negro to show that he is free; whereas with a white man or an Indian held in slavery the burden...