A MOST UNUSUAL CASE
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(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.)
State of Alabama, Circuit Court. John H.
Harris, being the master, or other person occupying that relation to William,
Peter, Daniel, John Joe, Elizabeth, Sallie, Jane and Other Negro slaves on said
John H. Harris plantation in said county called “The Egypt Place,” failed to
provide them with a sufficiency of healthy food & treated them with inhuman-
ity.
Partially printed document, accomplished by hand; some damage to the upper right
corner.
Lawrence County, ALA, 1858
[1,000/1,500]
AN EXTRAORDINARY DOCUMENT
,
indicting a slave owner for “inhumanity” to his slaves.
The action against this slaveholder was clearly not brought by the forenamed slaves, but the
verso of the document does bear the names of four men, George McNath, S.D. Houston, James
McNath and John Shinault. It would seem that these gentlemen had observed the “inhuman”
treatment meted out to Harris’ slaves, and in good conscience brought the matter before the local
magistrate. We could find no record of the case - the reverse states “No Prosecutor, True Bill,”
and is signed by H.(?) L. Stephenson, “Foreman of the Grand Jury.” It is possible that noth-
ing happened to Harris after all.
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(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION—AMISTAD CAPTIVES.) BALDWIN,
ROGER.
Argument of Roger Baldwin, of New Haven Before the Supreme
Court of the United States in the Case of the United States Appellants vs
Cinque and Others,, Africans of the Amistad.
32 pages, dis-bound.
New York: S.W. Benedict, 1841
[3,000/4,000]
FIRST EDITION
Roger Baldwin (1793-1863) one of the great lawyers of his age, in one of the
great pre-Civil War human rights cases, teamed up with former President John Quincy Adams
to successfully represent the Africans of the Amistad before the Supreme Court. The slaves on
board that Spanish schooner mutinied off the coast of Cuba, killed some of the crew members
and forced the ship to head north. It was captured by a U.S. Ship off Long Island, and the
Africans awaited their fate in a New Haven jail. “While Adams presented a bitter political
denunciation of the federal government’s treatment of the Amistad captives, Baldwin presented a
convincing legal argument.” (Finkelman, 225). Finkelman, 237; Dumond 24, Marvin 90,
Harvard Law Catalogue, 110, LCP 808.
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