About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupee Parish had permitted his slave
Eulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; and
thereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtual
freedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to get
official sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring and
desiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominal
sale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this man
proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and
the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for
freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state
supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in
strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall
suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in
this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of
action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be
a runaway or fugitive."[62]
[Footnote 61: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, May 25, 1849.]
[Footnote 62: E.
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