Case ID: scl_33/html/0266-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Richardson, J. Wardlaw, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The State v. Thomas P. Chandler.
    
    Although the overseer of a plantation, may, at least in the absence of the owner, give the written permit required by the Act of 1817, so as to justify a stranger in trading with the slaves placed under his charge, yet he cannot himself legally trade with them, without a written permit so to trade, from the owner. In virtue of his office as overseer, he has no legal right to trade with the slaves.
    
      Before Mr. Justice O’Neall, at Charleston, May Term, 1847.
    The defendant was indicted and convicted in three several eases, for trading with the skives Prince, Frank, and William, the property of Mrs. Prioleau.
    The fact was most clearly proved, hy Henry F. Porcher,. that the defendant, the overseer of Mrs. Prioleau, having charge of the slaves Prince, Frank, and William, in February, 1846, in Charleston District, exchanged with them whiskey for their weekly allowance of com.
    The 1st sec. of the Act of 1787, 7th Stat. 454, provides that it shall be criminal for any one to trade with a slave, “not having a permit so to deal, trade, or traffic, or sell any such article, from or under the hand of his master, or owner, or such other person as may have the care or management of such slave.” The Presiding Judge thought, and so instructed the jury, that the defendant, notwithstanding he was the overseer, was guilty, inasmuch as his trading was without a ticket so to trade from the master or owner. As overseer, he had no legal right to trade with the slaves. As to others, he might be very properly regarded, under the Act, as authorized to give the ticket required by it.
    The jury convicted the defendant, and he appealed, on the grounds—
    1. That the defendant, as appeared clearly in proof, was the overseer in exclusive charge of the negroes, with whom he is alleged to have carried on an unlawful traffic, and is therefore not within the provision of the Act of 1817; and his Honor, it is respectfully submitted, erred in charging the contrary.
    2. That the verdict was, in that and other respects, contrary to law and evidence.
    Yeadon, for the motion.
    Under the Act.of 1817, the overseer is authorized to give the permit required. He is the per-', son having the care or management of the slaves. He is placed on the same footing as the owner in reference to all acts of the slaves to third persons. All the Acts on the subject use similar language. Surely, then, if the overseer can give tickets to traffic with a stranger, he may traffic himself.
    Bailey, Attorney General, contra.
    
    The owner cannot trade, as contemplated by the Act, with his slave, but the overseer can. The Act excepts no one but the person who trades with a slave having a ticket. The overseer has not the care or management of the slave in all things, and there is nothing in the law investing him with the right to give tickets authorizing the slave to traffic.
   Richardson, J.

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Gan the overseer of a plantation, in virtue of the authority of his office, lawfully trade with the slaves placed under his charge ? is the question for the Court.

That the overseer may, at least in the absence of the master, give the written permit required by the Act of 1817, so as to justify a stranger in trading with the slave, may be conceded as lawful.

But can he himself so trade with the slave, without any written permit from the owner 1

If we are to judge from the terms of the Act, to wit, “ any one trading with a slave, not having a permit so to deal” or trade, &c. the overseer is clearly liable to the .penalty of the law, he having no such permit from the only person, the owner, that could give it to him. But the proper legal argument arises from the analogy between an overseer and other agents.

The commission of an agent is, not to act for himself, nor to take unlawful gain. His office is to act between his principal and other men. For suppose any clerk in a merchant’s store may give credit for goods sold, to a third person, but he cannot assume the like credit to himself. The same may be said of factors and salesmen in general. The permit to a slave to sell an articLe, is a license to sell that which is, legally speaking, the master’s property. And the overseer, like the factor, cannot sell to himself.

Enlarged policy and prudence, not to say the necessity of avoiding so great a temptation to abuse the trust, forbids it to be perverted to the mere personal and selfish purposes of the trustee. This limitation to the powers of agents applies to the office of the most general aud confidential agents — but more especially to the confined and mere ministerial agency of a manager of slaves. There is no reason, therefore, that the overseer of a plantation shall be placed out of the reach of this important distinction, in the authority of an agent, when he acts for himself, and when he acts between his principal and a stranger — -the latter being the object and the former the perversion of such a commission.

The Act of 1817, and all such Acts, constitute a great part of our slave police — the prohibition is to restrain the extensive vice of receiving stolen goods, under the disguise of buying them from negroes. Accordingly, the judicial construction has ever been, to bring within' its provisions every instance of illicit trading with slaves, in order to advance the true object, by suppressing the besetting mischief of this frequent vice.

The Act prohibits all manner of trading with slaves, except under a written permit of the specified article. This utter prohibition is the broad ground of such decisions.

The instance before the Court is one among the most obnoxious to the spirit of such laws. It was a fottl abuse of the confidence reposed in the overseer, and is very like the felonious embezzling part of a package by a carrier. Who would call the act less than swindling 1

Thus the spirit of the Act, and of past adjudications — the safety of the master and the morals of his slaves, unite with the policy to hold such a delinquent overseer under the penalty of the Act.

Even were the defendant not plainly within the usual rules for expounding the meaning of such Acts, yet I might with reason say, that for the character of overseers, for the safety of their employers, and for example’s sake, let the confidential key-keeper of the corn-house and the barn be punished when he proves so delinquent as to sell whiskey to his own flock; for their weekly corn let him be punished, if only in “odium spoliatoris.”

O’Neall, J. Evans, J. and Frost, J. concurred.

Wardlaw, J.

dissenting. According to the report, the defendant had charge of the slaves. All inquiries, then, as to the ordinary powers of an overseer, or as to the power conferred upon this defendant, are cut off. Under our statute, the person having “the care and management” of a slave— whether overseer, hirer, borrower, son of the owner, friend or agent, when it appears that he had the care and management, expressed in the report by “charge,” must be held to have just the same right to license trading with the slave which the owner has — and if he can license it in others, he may do it himself. If he abuses his power, like other unfaithful trustees he should be removed, but the acts which the trust legalized, so long as he held it, cannot be considered unlawful, much less criminal.

It is a great abuse for an overseer to corrupt slaves, by selling liquor to them; but sometimes it may be commendable for an overseer to let the slaves confided to him have liquor, and even to stimulate their industry by affording to them this gratification in exchange for what their labor has produced in the time allowed to them. There may be immense diversity between the cases, which would all be cases of selling liquor by an overseer to the slaves under him. It is enough to say that the law (except in the special cases of shop-keepers, retailers, and distillers,) makes no difference between liquor and other commodities, and the seemingly ruinous nature of the abuse practiced by this defendant, does not take him out of the pale of the law. If he had sold them arsenic, to be used in poisoning a human creature, or abolition pamphlets, he would have done worse than he has done: but he would not then, however guilty under other laws, have come any more within the statute against trading with slaves than I think he now does.

Motion refused.