ety." [101]

[Footnote 101: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 21, 1860, quoting
the Nashville _Union_.]

On the whole it is hardly possible to gauge precisely the degree of popular
apprehension in the premises. John Randolph was doubtless more picturesque
than accurate when he said, "the night bell never tolls for fire in
Richmond that the mother does not hug the infant more closely to her
bosom."[102] The general trend of public expressions laid emphasis upon the
need of safeguards but showed confidence that no great disasters were to be
feared. The revolts which occurred and the plots which were discovered were
sufficiently serious to produce a very palpable disquiet from time to time,
and the rumors were frequent enough to maintain a fairly constant undertone
of uneasiness. The net effect of this was to restrain that progress of
liberalism which the consideration of economic interest, the doctrines of
human rights and the spirit of kindliness all tended to promote.

[Footnote 102: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_, I, 295.]

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FORCE OF THE LAW

In many lawyers' briefs and court decisions it has been said that slavery
could exist only by force of positive legislation.[1] This is not
historically valid, for in virtually every American community where it
existed at all, the institution was first established by custom alone and
was merely recognized by statutes when these came to be enacted. Indeed the
chief purpose of the laws was to give sanction and assurance to the racial
and industrial adjustments already operative.

[Footnote 1: The source of this error lies doubtless in Lord Mansfield's
famous but fallacious decision of 1772 in the Somerset case, which is
recorded in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, Sec. 548. That decision is well
criticized in T.R.R. Cobb, _An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in
the United States of America_ (vol. I, all published, Philadelphia and
Savannah, 1858), pp. 163-175.

Cobb's treatise, though dealing with slaves as persons only and not as
property, is the best of the general analyses of the legal phase of the
slaveholding regime. A briefer survey is in the _Cyclopedia of Law and
Procedure_, William Mack ed., XXXVI (New York, 1910), 465-495. The works
of G.M. Stroud, _A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several
States_ (Philadelphia, 1827), and William Goodell, _The American Slave Code
in Theory and Practice_ (New York, 1853), ar