2018 American Justice like Draco and Caligula : universally reprobate
'Is a slave a person' is a dubious inquiry. But one far more dubious is 'whether the negro is a person ?'
Yet, this issue was the subject of learned legal debate in the 1850s!
Further, In light of two very rank United State Supreme Court cases that immunized American police from any criminal prosecution when they 'feared for their lives,' in the own minds, only, it is fair to say that the issue of 'person' remains very much in doubt for the 'Negro!'
Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor are such infamous cases!
https://www.google.com/…/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna776901
Harriet Beecher Stowe in KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (1853), p. 75 writes as follows :
"If 'we consider the negro a person,' says the judge; and from his decision in the case, he evidently intimates that he has a strong leaning to this opinion , though it has been contested by so many eminent legal authorities that he puts forth his sentiment modestly, and in a hypothetical form. The reader, perhaps , will need to be informed that the question whether the slave is to be considered a person or a human being in any respect has been extensively and ably argued on both sides in legal courts, and it may be a comfort to know that the balance of legal opinion inclines in favor of the slave. Judge Clark of Mississippi , is quite clear on the point, and argues very ably and earnestly , though as he confesses, against very respectable legal authorities , that the slave is a person,--that he is a reasonable creature. The reasoning occurs in the case State of Mississippi v. Jones, and is worthy of attention as a literary curiosity......
"'It has been determined in Virginia that slaves are persons . In the Constitution of the United States, slaves are expressly designated as 'persons.' In this state the legislature have considered slaves as reasonable and accountable beings; it would be a stigma upon the character of the state, and a reproach to the administration of justice , if the life of a slave could be taken with impunity , or if he could be murdered in cold blood, without subjecting the offender to the highest penalty known in the criminal jurisprudence of this country. Has the slave no rights, because he is deprived of his freedom? He is still a human being, possessing all of the rights of which he is not 'deprived by the positive provisions of the law;' but in vain shall we look for any law passed by the enlightened and philanthropic legislature of this state, giving even the master, much less to a stranger, power over the life of a slave. Such a statute would be worthy of the age of Draco or Caligula , and would be condemned by the unanimous voice of the people of this state, where even cruelty to slaves, much [more] the taking away of life , meets with universal reprobation. By the provisions of our law, a slave may commit murder, and be punished with death ; why, then, is it not murder to kill a slave? Can a mere chattel commit murder, and be subject to punishment ?'"
Yet in 2018 in the United States of America it is legal for police to kill black people with "impunity," the very "universally reprobate" action that the 1853 judge in Mississippi compared to "Draco and Caligula!"
