PEACE OF 1814, BETWEEN HIS BRITANNIC
     MAJESTY AND THE UNITED STATES, NEGROES WERE DESIGNATED AS
     PROPERTY.—­GEN.  WASHINGTON’S LETTER TO BRIG.  GEN.  RUFUS
     PUTNAM IN REGARD TO A NEGRO IN HIS REGIMENT CLAIMED BY MR.
     HOBBY.—­ENLISTMENT IN THE ARMY DID NOT ALWAYS WORK A
     PRACTICAL EMANCIPATION.

When the Revolutionary War began, the legal status of the Negro slave was clearly defined in the courts of all the colonies.  He was either chattel or real property.  The question naturally arose as to his legal status during his new relation as a soldier.  Could he be taken as property, or as a prisoner of war?  Was he booty, or was he entitled to the usage of civilized warfare,—­a freeman, and therefore to be treated as such?

The Continental Congress, Nov. 25, 1775, passed a resolution recommending the several colonial legislatures to establish courts that should give jurisdiction to courts, already in existence, to dispose of “cases of capture.”  In fact, and probably in law, Congress exercised power in cases of appeal.  Moreover, Congress had prescribed a rule for the distribution of prizes.  But, curiously enough, Massachusetts, in 1776, passed an Act declaring, that, in case captures were made by the forces of the colony, the local authorities should have complete jurisdiction in their distribution; but, when prizes or captives were taken upon colonial territory by the forces of the United Colonies, the distributions should be made in accordance with the laws of Congress.  This was but a single illustration of the divided sovereignty of a crude government.  That there was need of a uniform law upon this question, there could be no doubt, especially in a war of the magnitude of the one that was then being waged.

On the 13th of September, 1776, a resolution was introduced into the Massachusetts House of Representatives, “to prevent the sale of two negro men lately brought into this state, as prisoners taken on the high seas, and advertised to be sold at Salem, the 17th inst., by public auction."[588] The resolve in full is here given:—­

     “IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SEPT. 13, 1776: 

“Whereas this House is credibly informed that two negro men lately brought into this State as prisoners taken on the High Seas are advertised to be sold at Salem, the 17th instant, by public auction,

“Resolved, That the selling and enslaving the human species is a direct violation of the natural rights alike vested in all men by their Creator, and utterly inconsistent with the avowed principles on which this and the other United States have carried their struggle for liberty even to the last appeal, and therefore, that all persons connected with the said negroes be and they hereby are forbidden to sell them or in any manner to treat them otherways than is already ordered for the treatment of prisoners of war taken in the same vessell or others in the like employ and if any sale of the said negroes shall be made, it is hereby declared null and void.

     “Sent up for concurrence.