Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/411

 With respect to Cassy, as I had bought up Mr. Grip Curtis's pretended claim to her, she seemed safe enough; especially as, by the law of Louisiana, more humane and reasonable in this particular than that of any other slave state, a master, after allowing his slave to live as free for ten years, even without any formal emancipation, cannot after that renew his claim, of ownership; and it would not be difficult to prove that Cassy had for more than ten years past been recognized as free by the deceased Mr Curtis. But the case of Eliza, and especially of Montgomery, appeared to be surrounded by many legal difficulties.

No one in Louisiana, as appeared by an extract which the lawyer read to us from the Code Noir, or Slave Code, can emancipate a slave, except by special act of the legislature, unless that slave has attained the age of thirty years, and has behaved well for at least four years preceding his emancipation. Nor, according to the decision of the courts, are any emancipations, in case of slaves under thirty, to be established by the mere allowance of freedom. By another provision of the same code, children born of a mother then in a state of slavery, follow the condition of their mother, and are consequently slaves, and belong to the master of the mother; or as the civil code of Louisiana expresses it, "the children of slaves and the young of animals-belong to the proprietor of the mother of them by right of accession." Such unquestionably was the fact as to both Montgomery and Eliza; indeed it was by purchase as a slave that Montgomery had originally come into the possession of the deceased Mr Curtis; and as neither he nor Eliza were yet thirty years of age, nor near it, it did not seem possible that Mr Curtis could have executed in their behalf any valid act of emancipation. They, therefore, remained a part of his estate; and in default of any testamentary provision, they passed to Mr Agrippa Curtis, who, as his only brother, his father and mother being dead,