o procure possession of the negroes, claiming that she had
legally seized them on the occasion described. At the trial in the circuit
court, Singletary rehearsed the seizure and testified further that
Dangerfield had left the negroes customarily to themselves in virtually
complete freedom. In rebuttal, Dr. Theodore Gaillard testified that the
negroes, whom he described as orderly by habit, were kept under control
by the trustee and made to work. The verdict of the jury, deciding the
questions of fact in pursuance of the judge's charge as to the law, was in
favor of the defendants; and Mrs. Rhame entered a motion for a new trial.
This was in due course denied by the Court of Appeals on the ground that
Broad's will had clearly vested title to the slaves in Dangerfield, who
after Broad's death was empowered to do with them as he pleased. If he, who
was by the will merely trustee but by law the full owner, had given up
the practical dominion over the slaves and left them to their own
self-government they were liable to seizure under the law of 1800. This
question of fact, the court concluded, had properly been put to the jury
along with the issue as to the effectiveness of the plaintiff's seizure of
the slaves; and the verdict for the defendants was declared conclusive.[25]

[Footnote 25: Rebecca Rhame _vs_. James Ferguson and John R. Dangerfield,
in Rice, _Law Reports of South Carolina_, I, 196-203.]

This is the melodrama which the sober court record recites. The female
villain of the piece and her craven henchman were foiled by the sturdy
but wily trustee and the doughty Carolina colonel who, in headlong,
aristocratic championship of those threatened with oppression against
the moral sense of the community, charged upon the scene and counseled
slaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. And
in the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come to
judgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assured
the so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, the
decision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to prove
that negroes freed by will in South Carolina might be legally enslaved by
any person seizing them, and that the bequest of slaves in trust to an
executor as a merely nominal master was contrary to law;[26] and in later
times a historian has instanced the traveller's account in support of his
own statement that "Persons who had bee