Mr. Miller’s public statement was not as full and candid as it looked.  How, if the girl was sold to Mrs. Canby, his mother—­how is it that Belmonti bought her of Miller himself?  The answer is that while Williams never re-appeared, the girl, in February, 1835, “the girl Bridget,” now the mother of three children, was with these children bought back again by that same Mr. Miller from the entirely passive Mrs. Canby, for the same three hundred and fifty dollars; the same price for the four which he had got, or had seemed to get, for the mother alone when she was but a child of twelve years.  Thus had Mr. Miller become the owner of the woman, her two sons, and her daughter, had had her service for the keeping, and had never paid but one hundred dollars.  This point he prudently overlooked in his public statement.  Nor did he count it necessary to emphasize the further fact that when this slave-mother was about twenty-eight years old and her little daughter had died, he sold her alone, away from her two half-grown sons, for ten times what he had paid for her, to be the bond-woman of the wifeless keeper of a dram-shop.

But these were not the only omissions.  Why had Williams never come back either for the slave or for the proceeds of her sale?  Mr. Miller omitted to state, what he knew well enough, that the girl was so evidently white that Williams could not get rid of her, even to him, by an open sale.  When months and years passed without a word from Williams, the presumption was strong that Williams knew the girl was not of African tincture, at least within the definition of the law, and was content to count the provisional transfer to Miller equivalent to a sale.

Miller, then, was—­heedless enough, let us call it—­to hold in African bondage for twenty years a woman who, his own witnesses testified, had every appearance of being a white person, without ever having seen the shadow of a title for any one to own her, and with everything to indicate that there was none.  Whether he had any better right to own the several other slaves whiter than this one whom those same witnesses of his were forward to state he owned and had owned, no one seems to have inquired.  Such were the times; and it really was not then remarkable that this particular case should involve a lady noted for her good works and a gentleman who drove “the finest equipage in New Orleans.”

One point, in view of current beliefs of to-day, compels attention.  One of Miller’s witnesses was being cross-examined.  Being asked if, should he see the slave woman among white ladies, he would not think her white, he replied: 

“I cannot say.  There are in New Orleans many white persons of dark complexion and many colored persons of light complexion.”  The question followed: 

“What is there in the features of a colored person that designates them to be such?”

“I cannot say.  Persons who live in countries where there are many colored persons acquire an instinctive means of judging that cannot be well explained.”