Page:Notes on the History of Slavery - Moore - 1866.djvu/35

 according to the tetimony of his contemporaries, he had no equal." J. Hammond Trumbull's Hitorical Notes. Backus,, 35. Trumbull's Connecticut, Vol. . (1797), 417. Mr. Trumbull alo mentions a quetion raied in 1722, as to the tatus of the children of Indian captive-laves, in a memorial to the Legilature, from which it is apparent that no doubt was entertained as to the legal lavery of children of negroes or imported Indians from beyond eas.

Ample evidence is given elewhere in these notes of the fact, that the children of laves were actually held and taken to be laves, the property of the owners of the mothers, liable to be old and transferred like other chattels and as aets in the hands of executors and adminitrators. This fact comes out in many portions of this hitory; there is no one thing more patent to the reader. The intances are numerous, and it is needles to recapitulate them here; but it may be proper to refer to the facts that in the inftructions of the town of Leiceter to their representative in 1773, among the ways and means uggeted for extinguihing lavery, they propoed "that every negro child that hall be born in aid government after the enacting uch law hould be free at the ame age that the children of white people are," and in the petition of the negro laves for relief in