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The status of three slaves who traveled from Kentucky to the free states of Indiana and Ohio depended on Kentucky slave law rather than Ohio law, which had abolished slavery. 1852: Lemmon v. New York: Superior Court of the City of New York: Granted freedom to slaves who were brought into New York by their Virginia slave owners, while in transit ...
Hudgins v. Wright (1806) was a freedom suit decided in the favor of the slave Jackey Wright by the Virginia Supreme Court (then called the Court of Appeals). She had sued for freedom for herself and her two children based on her claim of descent from Indian women. Indian slavery had been prohibited in Virginia since 1705.
Additional laws regarding slavery were passed in the seventeenth century and in 1705 were codified into Virginia's first slave code, [37] An act concerning Servants and Slaves. The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 stated that people who were not Christians, or were black, mixed-race, or Native Americans would be classified as slaves (i.e., treated ...
In his A Biographical History of Blacks in America since 1528 (1971), Toppin explains the importance of Punch's case in the legal history of Virginia: Thus, the black man, John Punch, became a slave unlike the two white indentured servants who merely had to serve a longer term. This was the first known case in Virginia involving slavery. [27]
The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 (formally entitled An act concerning Servants and Slaves), were a series of laws enacted by the Colony of Virginia's House of Burgesses in 1705 regulating the interactions between slaves and citizens of the crown colony of Virginia. The enactment of the Slave Codes is considered to be the consolidation of ...
In a 1916 article, John H. Russell wrote, "Indeed no earlier record, to our knowledge, has been found of judicial support given to slavery in Virginia except as a punishment for a crime." [ 9 ] Russell makes that distinction because in 1640, John Punch "was reduced from his former condition of servitude for a limited time to a condition of ...
Virginia v. John Brown was a criminal trial held in Charles Town, Virginia, in October 1859.The abolitionist John Brown was quickly prosecuted for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, murder, and inciting a slave insurrection, all part of his raid on the United States federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
Slavery, Lord Mansfield ruled, had no basis in "natural law" and could only be maintained through "positive law". As slavery had never been enacted by English law, it did not legally exist in England and no person on English soil could be held in bondage. Slaves in Virginia and Maryland learned of the Somerset decision.