Two cases to close out this week’s topic. I raise my fist and bow my head in salute of the defendants, Abram and Dave.
State v Abram, 10 Alabama 928 (1847)
Isaac J. Kirkendall, a white overseer, saw Abram, a slave, loitering around the negro quarters. He ordered him to work. Abram replied that he was sick and could not work.
Kirkendall felt his pulse, declared him healthy, and again ordered him to work. Abram moved off slowly. Kirkendall struck him with a whip and the slave grabbed the whip. Kirkendall kicked at him and Abram grabbed his leg and threw him to the ground. Kirkendall pulled a gun and Abram knocked it out of his hand.
The two continued fighting and the slave bit off a portion of the overseer’s upper ear. He was charged and convicted of mayhem against a white person, a capital offense. The prisoner appealed.
Before the Alabama Supreme Court, his counsel argued that the ear was only partially bitten off, so the act did not constitute mayhem. He further contended that if a slave was unable to work he was not bound to do so. The court ruled that the act was not mayhem, but that the master or overseer was empowered to determine when slaves could and could not work.
Judge Ormond wrote that “when engaged in mortal strife, his adversary armed with a deadly weapon,” a slave might act according to “the instinctive dread of death, common alike to the bound and the free,” and inflict a wound in self-defense “in which the will did not cooperate,” willfulness being a component of the crime.
Dave v State, 22 Alabama 23 (1853)
John Cunningham hired a slave named Dave. One evening, Cunningham’s son and overseer told Dave to feed and curry the horses and mules. Dave failed to carry out his assignment.
The next day, the overseer confronted him, grabbed him by the collar, and told him to drop his pants for a whipping. Dave pulled a knife and cut young Cunningham, who then directed another slave, Step, to knock Dave in the head with an ax.
Dave threatened Step, who backed away. Eventually, Dave broke and ran. He was charged with assault with intent to kill.
The trial court ruled the slave put himself in danger by not being obedient and it was lawful to use as much force as was necessary to make a slave submit. The opinion of the Alabama Supreme Court Justice Lymon Gibbons approved of this principle of law. The court held that the slave’s privilege of self-defense arose only if the slave was not a “wrongdoer”.
On appeal, Judge Gibbons ruled that a master had “absolute dominion” over a slave and the right to enforce obedience. On the other hand, if a slave was merely disobedient, and not acting violently, the master could not threaten life and limb. Furthermore, slaves had a “natural right” to self-defense, but could not legally employ it “in the perpetration of a wrong.”