In my teaching, I
often make a point to use—and discuss—the research I did for Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (the cases, findings, implications, and so on). One question that
undergraduates, in particular, almost always ask me is: “what is your favorite case?”
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| Photo by the author |
My response varies. I have many “favorites.” Sometimes my answer involves
evidence that felt particularly hard won, such as one of the cases I found amongst
the bugs and rats in a Plaquemine, Louisiana, storage shed (research I
mentioned in a previous post). It involved a free black man who chased a white
man on horseback for miles, screaming insults and waving a loaded pistol. Sometimes
my response to the “favorites” question involves the women of the Belly family,
who took to the courts with regularity to protect and convey their property, to
enforce the terms of their contracts, and to adjudicate a number of other
disputes. They even sued their husbands. But most often my answer involves the
case that I used to open the book—the
case that I see as emblematic of the larger points about personhood and
property that I make throughout. This case involved an assault, and I will
share excerpts of my discussion of this lawsuit below.
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| Photo by the author |
On
Sunday, September 6, 1857, two white men, William Calmes and John Buford,
violently seized, whipped, and attempted to kidnap Valerien Joseph in Pointe
Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Empowered by their duties as slave patrollers, Calmes
and Buford entered the property of another white man in search of runaway
slaves. There, they came upon Joseph, a free black carpenter engaged in his
work. Although Joseph had not given them any reason to believe he was a
runaway, and despite the protests of onlookers and Joseph’s own declarations
that he was a free man, Calmes and Buford grabbed Joseph and attempted to carry
him away. When others tried to intervene, Calmes yelled that he “would do what
he pleased,” for he intended to seize and then sell Joseph as a slave. In order
to subdue their prey, they took turns beating him in the head with a large
stick. Then Calmes removed Joseph’s clothing, forced him on his belly, and
whipped his naked body with a cowhide “forty to fifty times” while an armed
Buford stood guard to prevent others from assisting their bloodied captive. Eventually
the onlookers helped pull Joseph from the clutches of his captors, and he
managed to escape.
Five
days after the attack, Joseph sued Calmes and Buford in the Ninth Judicial
District Court, a local trial court held in Pointe Coupee Parish. He demanded
damages: the “illegal and wicked acts of said Calmes and Buford,” Joseph
insisted, “have caused your petitioner damage to the amount of fifteen hundred
dollars.” To that end, he requested that the white judge, A. D. M. Haralson,
summon his attackers to court for a public accounting of their offenses against
him, and “after due course of law,” “they be condemned” to pay him $1,500, plus
interest and court costs. The defendants denied the charges against them, and
the case went to trial. The court subpoenaed the testimony of several
witnesses, and each verified Joseph’s claims: one white man testified that
Calmes and Buford “fell upon Joseph” and “pulled him out of the yard and struck
him on the head with a stick.” Another white man (in charge of organizing slave
patrols) testified that Calmes and Buford were not in fact on patrol that day. And
still other white witnesses relayed that Joseph was “born free” of an Indian
mother and a black father. After hearing the evidence, a white jury found for
the plaintiff and issued a judgment for damages: $300 from Calmes and $200 from
Buford. The judge denied the defendants’ request for a new trial and ordered
the men to pay their debt. Both men also faced criminal charges for Joseph’s
attack, but the outcome is unknown.
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| Photo by the author |
That
a black man would take his white attackers to court in the first place seems
paradoxical in itself. That he would win is yet more surprising. But perhaps
more interesting still is how Joseph
framed his suit.
Joseph
did not begin his petition to the court with a description of the violence
inflicted upon him (as one might in a lawsuit for damages). Instead, he framed
the case as a debt action, using the language of property and obligation. Calmes
and Buford, he insisted, owed him money: “The petition of Valerien Joseph, a
free man of color, residing in the parish, Respectfully shows,” he began, “That
William Calmes and [John] Buford, residents of the parish aforesaid, are justly
and legally indebted, in solido, unto him in the sum of fifteen hundred
dollars, with interest of 50% from judicial demand until paid.” They owed him
this amount, moreover, for their illegal assault on his property: his body.
The
jury agreed and awarded him $500 for his trouble. Buford paid the $200 shortly
after the trial, but Calmes ignored the judgment. When the amount went unpaid
over a year later, Joseph initiated additional legal proceedings against him. This
time, Judge Haralson ordered the sheriff to seize Calmes’s property, sell it at
auction, and settle his obligation to Joseph. Although Calmes absconded to
Mississippi before the court could seize his property, Joseph continued to
press his case. He made another white man, John A. Warren, a party to the
lawsuit and pursued garnishment proceedings against him. Warren possessed property belonging to Calmes, property that could be
seized and sold. When Warren failed to attend court, Joseph received a
judgment against him (in default). On April 20, 1860, mere months before
Louisiana left the Union to join a slaveholders’ republic, the court ordered
Warren to pay Joseph $350 (the original amount plus court costs and interest). When
Warren did not pay, the sheriff seized his property, sold it at auction, and
provided Joseph with the proceeds. One year later, almost to the day, shots
would be fired at Ft. Sumter initiating a war over the right to hold black
people as property.
At work in Joseph’s “demand” are a series of
interlocking understandings about the relation of one’s property to one’s
person, both in the sense of one’s physical body and in the more abstract sense
of one’s ability to be seen at law as someone who “counts” such that he or she
can make a claim. These relations between one’s person, one’s property, and
one’s legal claims form the subject of this book. To properly understand
Joseph’s suit, why he went to court, why he insisted on describing assault as a
matter of debt and obligation, why he won, and why he eventually managed to
have a white man’s property placed on the auction block, requires that we
re-evaluate our understandings of the relationship between black people,
claims-making, racial exclusion, and the legal system in the antebellum South
more broadly.
This case raises questions about who had access
to the power of the law and under what circumstances. Calmes and Buford
certainly expected that they did. After all, they were white men, men whose
race and status gave them claims to legal and political standing. They were
slave patrollers, empowered by state statute to detain possible runaways. As
slaveholders, they held property rights in black people. Thus, with the law on
their side, they might then get away with kidnapping and selling a free black
man. Their property, however, ended up on the auction block. Joseph, by
contrast, harnessed the power of the state to serve his interests and to do his
bidding: he sued two white men, bound them in obligation to him through debt,
and compelled the courts to seize white property and sell it at auction to
settle his claims and compensate him for his degradation. The court record of
the slave South is rife with stories like Joseph’s.
