a peculiar favorite with his master. But recently, upon grounds less technical and far higher and sounder, it has been deter mined that a court of chancery will protect the possession and enjoyment of this pecu liar property, a property in intellectual and moral and social qualities, in skill, in fidelity and in gratitude, as well as in their capacity for labor, and any owner may now say and show to a court of chancery; I am master, this is my slave, and he shall retain or re cover the possession." 1 In 1833, the supreme court enjoining the sale of a negro boy, gave expression to these lofty sentiments : •The slave and the master should never be separated when affection exists between them. In the next place, it often must occur that the mother will be separated from the children, or the husband from the wife, if the sheriff be permitted to sell. Nothing can be much more abhorrent to these poor people, or to the feelings of every benevolent individual than to see a large family of slaves sold at sheriff's sale; the infant children, father and mother to different bid ders. To treat them as other domestic animals, would be to declare, that, as a people, we had, in reference to this class, sunk all feelings of humanity, and that the slave was not elevated in his sensibilities over the lower classes of animals, which are allowed to have none worthy the protection of man. As a fact and as a theory, this is untrue. These are some of the considera tions why the courts of equity have protect ed the slave as well as the master from un lawful separation. Truly, compensation for the market value of the slave could be had at law as for the horse or the ox, but the mutual feelings of dependence, affection, and humanity, existing between master and slave, have no cash price, and cannot be compensated in money."2 In 1845, a most pathetic case came before 1 Henderson v. Yaulx, 10 Yerg., 37. 3 Loflin v. Espy, 4 Very., 92.
the supreme court. Elias, a slave, was emancipated by his master, and afterwards married a slave belonging to a neighbor. Elias had a child, and upon the death of the owner of his wife and child, at the adminis trator's sale, with the consent of the family, Elias bought his wife and child for the sum often dollars. Whereupon, Smith, a credi tor of Elias, levied an execution upon the wife and child, as the property of Elias. A bill was brought to enjoin the sale, and we would search long to find an opinion, in which a court expresses so thorough an indignation at a creditor. In granting a perpetual injunction, the court says : " But they (the wife and child) trusted and not rashly, it seems, to the heart of the husband and the father, as being, at least, equivalent to the deed of another. If he, stifling the voice of nature, and severing the paternal tie, had been such a barbarian and monster as to have medita ted a sale of them, for his pecuniary advan tage, upon the strength of his mere legal title, is there a chancery court in Christen dom, having jurisdiction over such a trust, which would not promptly interpose, at their instance, and enjoin him from perpetrating against them so flagrant a wrong? And wil] not such a court interpose in a case, little short in its enormity of that supposed, where a creditor of Elias seeks to produce the same result by an execution sale at law? Certainly it would. That much we have the power and it is our duty to do." 3 In 1849, the court, in passing upon the duty of a hirer of slaves, said : " The law, as administered at this day, in most of the slave States, rigidly exacts from the hirer an ob servance of the duties of humanity; and that measure of care and attention to the com fort and welfare of the slave, that a master, of a just and humane sense of duty, would feel it incumbent on him to exercise in the treatment of his own servant." 4 3 Elias;-. Smith, 6 Hum., 35. 4 Lunsford;•. Baynham, IO Hum., 269.
