I wrote too quickly, and mesnenor offered a more accurate
account of “chattel slavery,” but the situation was actually more complicated even
than he or she indicates. In the English
Common Law [and elsewhere] a distinction was drawn between chattels movable and
chattels immovable or real. Furniture,
clothing, jewelry, cattle, etc. were chattels movable; land was chattels
immovable. [Hence in French, meuble is furniture and immeuble is real estate.] When a man of property died, his chattels
movable were the first parts of his estate to be sold off to pay his
debts, thus protecting the land. You would think that slaves would
be chattels movable, but if they were sold off first with the furniture, the widow would be left
with land and no one to work it, so in a series of court cases in the American
colonies that defied logic, slaves were declared chattels real or immovable,
thus safeguarding the heirs. The best
detailed account of this can be found in a fascinating book called Southern Slavery and the Law, by Thomas
Morris. [At least, I found it
fascinating. I got it put on the list of
Fifty Major Works of Afro-American Studies that we required all doctoral students to read and write papers on in the first year Major Works seminar, but
the students hated it and it was dropped from the list.]
Sunday, December 31, 2017
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