D. Wheeler, _A Practical Treatise on the Law of Slavery_
(New York and New Orleans, 1837); and all the thousands of decisions of
published record are briefly digested in _The Century Edition of the
American Digest_, XLIV (St. Paul, 1903), 853-1152.
The development of the slave code in Virginia is traced in J.C. Ballagh,
_A History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1902), supplemented by J.H.
Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913); and the legal
regime of slavery in South Carolina at the middle of the nineteenth century
is described by Judge J.B. O'Neall in _The Industrial Resources of the
Southern and Western States_, J.B.D. DeBow ed., II (New Orleans, 1853),
269-292.]
As a rule each slaveholding colony or state adopted early in its career
a series of laws of limited scope to meet definite issues as they were
successively encountered. Then when accumulated experience had shown a
community that it had a general problem of regulation on its hands its
legislature commonly passed an act of many clauses to define the status of
slaves, to provide the machinery of their police, and to prescribe legal
procedure in cases concerning them whether as property or as persons.
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