Decision
Justice Mathias McGirk of the Missouri Supreme Court said that Stockton had "willfully procured a slave and held her, unlawfully, in free territories, an act punishable by forfeiture of the slave, as decreed by territorial law." With this ruling, he was supporting the laws of the neighboring free territories and states and closing a loophole by which Army officers had tried to argue they could keep slaves. Stockton had argued that he had no choice in his assignments with the Army, so should not have to lose his slave property as a result.
Rachel's success in this case gave her the basis to sue for freedom for her son James Henry. (Perhaps her attorney recommended that the cases be separated after she filed her initial petition above. This strategy was sometimes followed, perhaps so that juries did not worry too much about depriving a slaveholder of property all at once.) Rachel was successful in gaining freedom for her son; as he was born to a woman held illegally as a slave in a free state (and freed on those grounds), he was also free, according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, in which the child gained his social status from his mother.
Read more about this topic: Rachel V. Walker
Famous quotes containing the word decision:
“Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this nation. This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war,” except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Once the decision has been reached, close your ears even to the best counter-argument: a sign of strong character. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)