Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

7-30-2014

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; Entrepreneurship Research & Policy Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Cognitive Science Network; Humanities Network

Abstract

In August 1825 several free young black people were enticed onto a ship in the Delaware River along the Philadelphia waterfront Thus began their descent to the heart of the old South They were kidnapped and held aboard a ship destined for a stop somewhere near Cape Henlopen Delaware Some days later they were carried by wagon to Maryland's eastern shore and another ship took them further south They walked across Georgia and into Alabama One young man Cornelius Sinclair was sold in Tuscaloosa He was a free person converted into a slave But that was not the end Those who survived were then taken to Mississippi where a slaveowner realized that they were probably free The slaveowner contacted the Mayor of Philadelphia to verify the story of kidnapping and eventually most of those held in Mississippi were sent back to Philadelphia Then the mayor set about rescuing Sinclair too In Tuscaloosa a local minister helped Sinclair by filing a lawsuit to ask for his freedom A judge who would later as governor of Alabama seek to imprison abolitionists for spreading antislavery literature presided over the trial that freed Sinclair The newly freed Sinclair made a trip even further south to New Orleans and eventually back to Philadelphia where he faced down the men who had kidnapped himSinclairs story is one of epic proportions It is a nineteenth century version of the Odyssey And while Cornelius journey home took fewer years than Odysseus journey Sinclair traveled farther Some of the other kidnapped people made it home as well one died along the way Others never returned But this story is one of the dark evil in human hearts and also of the triumph even if in greatly circumscribed fashion of the rule of law It is a story of a most unexpected turn in a legal system dedicated to the maintenance of the system of slaveryWhile there has been some previous discussion of Sinclair's case that story has been told only briefly and exclusively from the perspective of the antislavery press and the records in Philadelphia This is the first time that the Tuscaloosa part of the story has been told And in this case study one can see the difficulty that southern jurists slaveowners and litigants had in dealing with the central tendency of the slave law in contrast with considerations of humanity and justice

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