except Hager who had come drunk and without invitation.  In the trial court, in Rutherford County where the tragedy had occurred, the judge excluded evidence that such corn huskings were the custom of the country without the requirement of written permission for the slaves attending, and he charged the jury that Jones’ employment of Isaac and Isaac’s death on his premises made him liable to Allen for the value of the slave.  But on Jones’ appeal the Supreme Court overruled this, asserting that “under our modified form of slavery slaves are not mere chattels but are regarded in the two-fold character of persons and property; that as persons they are considered by our law as accountable moral agents; ... that certain rights have been conferred upon them by positive law and judicial determination, and other privileges and indulgences have been conceded to them by the universal consent of their owners.  By uniform and universal usage they are constituted the agents of their owners and sent on business without written authority.  And in like manner they are sent to perform those neighborly good offices common in every community....  The simple truth is, such indulgences have been so long and so uniformly tolerated, the public sentiment upon the subject has acquired almost the force of positive law.”  The judgment of the lower court was accordingly reversed and Jones was relieved of liability for his laxness.[28]

[Footnote 28:  Head’s Tennessee Reports, I, 627-639.]

There were sharp limits, nevertheless, to the lenity of the courts.  Thus when one Brazeale of Mississippi carried with him to Ohio and there set free a slave woman of his and a son whom he had begotten of her, and then after taking them home again died bequeathing all his property to the mulatto boy, the supreme court of the state, in 1838, declared the manumission void under the laws and awarded the mother and son along with all the rest of Brazeale’s estate to his legitimate heirs who had brought the suit.[29] In so deciding the court may have been moved by its repugnance toward concubinage as well as by its respect for the statutes.

[Footnote 29:  Howard’s Mississippi Reports, II, 837-844.]

The killing or injury of a slave except under circumstances justified by law rendered the offender liable both to the master’s claim for damages and to criminal prosecution; and the master’s suit might be sustained even where the evidence was weak, for as was said in a Louisiana decision, the deed was “one rarely committed in presence of witnesses, and the most that can be expected in cases of this kind are the presumptions that result from circumstances."[30] The requirement of positive proof from white witnesses in criminal cases caused many indictments to fail.[31] A realization of this hindrance in the law deprived convicted offenders of some of the tolerance which their crimes might otherwise have met.  When in 1775, for example, William Pitman was found guilty and sentenced by the