32
Slavery in the State of North Carolina.
[348
his freedom. He lost the case. It was held that only the master could emancipate and that the Court only gave permission to emancipate. The harshness of the law led to varions subterfuges in regard to emancipation. It was attempted to hold slaves in nominal servitude, but in real freedom. This was opposed for the general reason that it increased the free negro class and whenever a case involving such a trick came before the Supreme Court it was severely handled. A case in point was that of the Quakers, which arose as follows: In 1817 William Dickinson conveyed a slave to the trustees of the Quaker society of Contentnea, to be held in a kind of guardianship, to be kept at work but to receive the profits of his labor, and ultimately to be free when his freedom could be effected by the laws of the State. In 1827 the matter was before the Supreme Court. It was in evidence that nothing was said about sending the slave out of the State when he should be freed. On the contrary it seemed to be the purpose of the parties to keep him in the State till free, and then to let him go where he would. The opinion was by Taylor, Chief Justice. He declared that the practice of the Quakers was emancipation in everything but name. By statute a religious society could hold property for its use only, and in a conveyance to it for a purpose forbidden by the policy of the laws nothing was passed. That the Quakers did not hold this slave, or other slaves, for their own use was shown by the fact that slaveholding was against their well-known principles. Justice Hall dissented. He thought a religious society might hold personal property unlimitedly and seems not to have approved of the law which fĂŻxed such stringent measures against emancipation.1 Regardless of this decision, as will be seen later on, the Quakers, as a society, continued to hold slaves for purposes of emancipation. A case not unlike this occurred in 1822, when Collier Hill left slaves to four trustees, one of whom was “Richard 1
Contentnea Society vs. Dickinson, I Devereaux, p. 189.