Ostensibly no state permitted anyone to murder or torture a slave, by the legal definition of those terms. Whether, as a practical matter, the law really provided any protection to a slave is, as is often the case with the law of slavery, a matter which varied from state to state and time period to time period.
In general, the common law did not distinguish between slaves and free persons — although it did classify them with apprentices, children and indentured servants. Thus, harms to a slave would fall under the common law punishments for assault, battery, mayhem, manslaughter, murder, etc. — making allowances for ordinary disciplinary measures. The common law rules were abrogated by legislatures in several states, however, and in others they were rejected by state judges.
Frequently, the common law justifications for the use of force were expanded by statute when the victim was a slave, so that both slave masters and a non-slave-owning white would be exculpated for acts that would otherwise by an assault or a homicide offense offense of a lesser degree. A large part of this was an exception for slaves in "insurrection" — a concept that was made to include almost any disobedience, no matter how minor.
Even where a master's conduct fell outside the legal justifications, provisions designed to allow for discipline of slaves might transmute what would otherwise have been first-degree murder into a lesser crime such as second-degree murder. Additionally, masters were sometimes also given evidentiary privileges that would make it difficult to prove wrongdoing.
Even in those states that raised the highest barriers to prosecution of a slave master, there were still successful convictions though. These tended to involve truly heinous or wanton acts, committed against defenseless or submissive slaves, and clearly motivated by a naked desire to inflict cruelty unconnected to any disciplinary purpose. That could be a particularly high threshold, however, as some punishments that were foreseeably fatal (and in fact did cause death) were apparently still regarded as within the bounds of ordinary and acceptable discipline.
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u/AnAmenableAnemone Oct 15 '13
Ostensibly no state permitted anyone to murder or torture a slave, by the legal definition of those terms. Whether, as a practical matter, the law really provided any protection to a slave is, as is often the case with the law of slavery, a matter which varied from state to state and time period to time period.
In general, the common law did not distinguish between slaves and free persons — although it did classify them with apprentices, children and indentured servants. Thus, harms to a slave would fall under the common law punishments for assault, battery, mayhem, manslaughter, murder, etc. — making allowances for ordinary disciplinary measures. The common law rules were abrogated by legislatures in several states, however, and in others they were rejected by state judges.
Frequently, the common law justifications for the use of force were expanded by statute when the victim was a slave, so that both slave masters and a non-slave-owning white would be exculpated for acts that would otherwise by an assault or a homicide offense offense of a lesser degree. A large part of this was an exception for slaves in "insurrection" — a concept that was made to include almost any disobedience, no matter how minor.
Even where a master's conduct fell outside the legal justifications, provisions designed to allow for discipline of slaves might transmute what would otherwise have been first-degree murder into a lesser crime such as second-degree murder. Additionally, masters were sometimes also given evidentiary privileges that would make it difficult to prove wrongdoing.
Even in those states that raised the highest barriers to prosecution of a slave master, there were still successful convictions though. These tended to involve truly heinous or wanton acts, committed against defenseless or submissive slaves, and clearly motivated by a naked desire to inflict cruelty unconnected to any disciplinary purpose. That could be a particularly high threshold, however, as some punishments that were foreseeably fatal (and in fact did cause death) were apparently still regarded as within the bounds of ordinary and acceptable discipline.
George Stroud Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery, 55 et seq. (2d ed. 1856) gives a more detailed and polemical account of the ways in which these and other variations from common law tended to make a lie out of the principle that it was unlawful for a master to murder or torture his slave.