an make no contract; cannot form a legal marriage;
cannot constitute a family--husbands and wives, parents and children,
being liable (except in Louisiana) to be sold apart; cannot protect his
wife's or daughter's chastity against the master's will; has no right of
self-defence, but may be lawfully killed for resisting or striking his
master or (in some States) any white man; has no appeal from his master;
can bring no action; cannot testify in courts; has no right to
education, but teaching him to read and write is penally prohibited.

The laws do not pretend to recognize and protect him as a person, except
against murder and excessive cruelty; and these laws are nullified if
the master take care to kill or torture him apart from the presence of
white witnesses; and even if there be legal witnesses, the murderer or
torturer can seldom be brought to punishment. 'A cruel and unreasonable
battery' on a slave by the master or hirer is _not indictable_. This is
Judge Ruffin's decision. (2 Devereux's N.C. Rep., 265). This decision is
celebrated for the language in which it is announced, and the grounds on
which it is rested.

'_The power of the master_,' says the Judge, '_must be absolute to
render the submission, of the slave perfect_. I most freely confess my
sense of the harshness of this proposition. I feel it as deeply as any
man can. And as a principle of moral right, every person in his
retirement must repudiate it. But in the actual condition of things it
must be so. There is no remedy. This discipline belongs to the state of
slavery. They cannot be disunited without abrogating at once the rights
of the master, and absolving the slave from his subjection. It
constitutes the curse of slavery to both the bond and the free portion
of our population. But it is _inherent in the relation_ of master and
slave. That there may be particular instances of cruelty and deliberate
barbarity where, in conscience, the law might properly interfere, is
most probable. The difficulty is to determine where _a court_ may
properly begin. Merely in the abstract, it may well be asked which power
of the master accords with right. The answer will probably sweep away
all of them. But we cannot look at the matter in this light. The truth
is we are forbidden to enter on a train of general reasoning on the
subject. _We cannot allow the right of the master to be brought into
discussion in the courts of justice. The slave, to remain a slave, must
b