[Footnote 1: The source of this error lies doubtless in Lord Mansfield's
famous but fallacious decision of 1772 in the Somerset case, which is
recorded in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, Sec. 548. That decision is well
criticized in T.R.R. Cobb, _An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in
the United States of America_ (vol. I, all published, Philadelphia and
Savannah, 1858), pp. 163-175.
Cobb's treatise, though dealing with slaves as persons only and not as
property, is the best of the general analyses of the legal phase of the
slaveholding regime. A briefer survey is in the _Cyclopedia of Law and
Procedure_, William Mack ed., XXXVI (New York, 1910), 465-495. The works
of G.M. Stroud, _A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several
States_ (Philadelphia, 1827), and William Goodell, _The American Slave Code
in Theory and Practice_ (New York, 1853), are somewhat vitiated by the
animus of their authors.
The many statutes concerning slavery enacted in the several colonies,
territories and states are listed and many of them summarized in J.C. Hurd,
_The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States_ (Boston, 1858), I,
228-311; II, 1-218. Some hundreds of court decisions in the premises are
given in J.
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