Their convictions,
on the other hand, were sometimes set aside by higher courts on appeal, or
their sentences estopped from execution by the governor's pardon.[23] The
thoroughness with which some of the charges against negroes were considered
is illustrated in two cases tried before the county court at Newbern, North
Carolina, in 1826. In one of these a negro boy was acquitted of highway
robbery after the jury's deliberation of several hours; in the other the
jury on the case of a free negro woman charged with infanticide had been
out for forty-six hours without reaching a verdict when the newspaper
dispatch was written.[24]
[Footnote 23: The working of these courts and the current criticisms of
them are illustrated in H.M. Henry _The Police Control of the Slave in
South Carolina_, pp. 58-65.]
[Footnote 24: News item from Newbern, N.C., in the Charleston _City
Gazette_, May 9, 1826.]
The circuit and supreme courts of the several states, though the slave
cases which they tried were for the most part concerned only with such dry
questions as detinue, trover, bailment, leases, inheritance and reversions,
in which the personal quality of the negroes was largely ignored,
occasionally rendered decisions of vivid human interest even where matters
of mere property were nominally involved.
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