Introduction
Laws are put in place to protect people from injustice, to encourage fairness in society and to prevent anomie in a society. In Melton McLaurin’s book Celia, A Slave, the case failed to provide her with the fairness of which it advocates with the selective application of the law regarding rape. It also disregards her right to defend herself as seen in its refusal to allow a black girl to take the stand and give her testimony. This paper will therefore analyze the history of the story based on McLaurin’s book, give the moral anxieties it springs up, the reactions of various characters in the book and finally extrapolates on the inadequacies of the law in providing justice for the slave society. It also looks at Missourian Law and how it expressed a rift between how it regarded slave. Were they property or human beings?
Main body
The story tells of a young slave named Celia who was sold to a widower called Robert Newsom. She became his sexual slave at the age of 14 while on the trip home to Calloway County. This went on for sometime until she fell in love with a fellow slave named George who coerced her into ending her relationship with Newsom. Later that same day, Newsom came into the cabin he had built for her close to his house and sought her for the usual but she decided to defend herself with a large stick. She struck him twice and he fell dead. In realizing this she got rid of the evidence. Later George implicated her in his disappearance and she was forced to confess. This constituted probable cause and she was sent to jail.
Due to the zeitgeist of the time, slavery was a hot-button issue that was proving to divide the US into North and South. In Missouri most of the residents were pro-slavery and therefore had very little regard for a slave’s basic human right. In the end, Celia was hanged by the neck until dead fro a murder she committed in self defense and unintentionally. Even after the death of Celia, the existing Missourian Laws were not extended to protect slaves until after the civil war in the USA.
This story of an insignificant little slave girl is an important part of history. McLaurin illustrates that such stories, “often better illustrate certain aspects of the major issues of a particular period than do the lives of those who… achieve national prominence” (McLaurin ix).
McLaurin delineates in his book that, “The life of Celia demonstrates how slavery placed individuals, black and white, in specific situations that forced them to make and to act upon personal decisions of a fundamentally moral nature” (McLaurin xi).
His book looks at the personal moral values that the Missourians had to attend to when face with the case of Celia.
According to Melton’s book, there are certain dilemmas or anxieties that are raised. This is reflected in the different responses of the characters regarding their feelings towards her relationship with Newsom and her subsequent trial for his murder. He speculates that the interrogator must have had the following response to her confession: “her confession was certain to have impressed upon him the dangers of holding human beings in bondage” (McLaurin 39). This, however, is seen as a naïve assumption since it is quite uncertain that this would be the response of a white slave owner in the antebellum South.
In the court set up, Celia came before the Judge William Hall who gave her a court appointed defense lawyer, John Jameson who was seen as the right choice as he had no bias in the matter and was a reputable lawyer who had served in Congress. The idea was to look non-partisan in light of the tension between pro-slavery activists and the abolitionists of the South. The defense argued that the defendant, Celia, was acting on self defense due to the sexual harassment she faced from Newsom. It sought to enter the evidence to this effect by giving the all-male jury instructions about the Missouri State law regarding sexual assault. He wanted to convey the following message:
“The words “any woman” in the first clause of the 29th section, of second article of laws of Missouri for 1845, concerning crimes & punishments, embrace slave women, as well as free white women” (McLaurin 36).
The judge denied this request which led to her subsequent hanging.
According to Missouri law, slaves who lifted their hands against whites, except in self-defense, were to be punished according to the decision of the justice or judge, with no more than 39 lashes. This law therefore was Jameson’s defense following the events that led to her murdering Newsom as recounted in her confession where she described the actions that led to his death. She said that she had fetched a hefty stick to protect herself earlier that day in 1885 just in case he came by. Sure enough, he came, and she struck him twice with it when he tried to force herself on her despite of the message she left with his daughters and her complications that arose due to her pregnancy. She then proceeded to dismember his body, cut wood to fuel fire for her fire place and burnt his body. She buried his bones and enlisted the help of his grandson the next morning to get rid of the ashes and the remaining evidence.
This is an ambiguous and illogical recount of the events that occurred as it does not account for the fact that Celia was ill and pregnant and could not therefore possibly have cut the firewood and tended to a fire enough to burn a human corpse by herself. McLaurin therefore implies that she had help from George or he was the actual murderer and that Celia lied to protect him. He argues that the burning of the corpse over a period of one night, “would have taxed the strength of a healthy woman, and Celia was pregnant and sick” (McLaurin 49). This aspect will be explored later in analysis of George’s moral dilemma and subsequent actions.
Jameson then launched an appeal to the Supreme Court that showed his impartiality and perhaps genuine empathy for Celia’s predicament. The Supreme Court ruled that it found no probable cause to launch a new trial and denied the motion to open a new trial and issue a stay of execution. Their motions were denied twice by Judge Hall and the Supreme Court respectively.
The prosecution objected to the defense’s instructions to the jury arguing that she herself had confessed and that she had contravened the law by killing her owner. The law stated that sexual assault was not considered rape if committed against a slave by the master but was rape if it was committed by an outsider and thus a trespass. An owner could not trespass on his own property! Their position showed that they felt no anxiety for her plight especially in light of their actions in preventing the entering of the defense’s main defense of the instructions to the jury.
The jury was composed of slave owners (almost half of them) who had families and were all males. They may have felt more pressure to give this guilty verdict since the residents may have not wanted to acknowledge the acts of sexual exploitation of slaves by their masters.
Newsom’s daughters most probably knew of their fathers actions and did not help Celia because of their economic dependence on their father. They were totally submissive to him and they probably did not even convey the message Celia had told them to deliver to their father earlier that Friday (McLaurin 139).
George plays an even bigger role in the unfolding events of the tragedy that befall Celia. As mentioned earlier, McLaurin implies that George had a bigger role to play in the murder than did Celia. To exercise his male dominance in his relationship with Celia, he gave her an ultimatum to confront their master and tell him off. He could not have done this directly by himself because it could have probably resulted in his death (McLaurin 30). He therefore must have put undue pressure on Celia to end her relationship with Newsom. He also implies that he may have helped her get rid of the incriminating evidence or have committed the murder himself since she was ill and pregnant and was in no position to have done such taxing work in the period of one night alone. When the interrogator who was Newsom’s neighbor questioned George the next day, George implicated Celia in his disappearance which led to her confession (McLaurin 50). He later disappeared and was never charged for the murder.
The Missourians were torn over slavery during this period as demonstrated by their laws and the senatorial race between Thomas Hart Benton who was an abolitionist and David Atchinson who was pro-slavery. “The Missouri “Slave Code” of 1804 made no distinction between slaves and other personal property” (McLaurin 6). The laws at that time viewed slaves as property as seen in the law that only protected a slave only when she was raped by an outsider. This was seen as trespass and was punishable by law. If the abuser was the slave owner, it was not sexual assault but an exercise of the master’s freedom and authority.
It is also important to note that Newsom probably had continued to rape her repeatedly because of the law that stated that any children born by a female slave was an increase in property and therefore belonged to the master.
On the other hand, slaves were seen as human beings when it came to violence against them. A slave could stand up to or even defend themselves from their masters as long as the master sought to harm the slave. They were also entitled to counsel in court as seen in the appointment of Jameson as her defense lawyer.
In the end, the law did not provide justice in the antebellum era pre-civil war. The current laws were very suppressive and prejudiced against slaves (especially female slaves). In Celia’s case, she did not adequately defend herself because she was not given an opportunity to take the stand. This was not allowed under Missouri law for a slave to take give testimony against a white man or her slave master even if he is deceased. This killed any chance of an acquittal as she could not defend herself before the jury. Judge Hall’s denial of the defense’s motion is also a complete injustice as the jury could only see the prosecution’s point of view which argued that she had no right to refuse her master.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Celia’s story was of great importance to the abolition of slavery and the changing of history in America. This paper recounts the story as told by McLaurin and how sexual exploitation of female slaves was rife among slave owners. It looks at the moral anxieties that arose due to Newsom’s relationship with Celia for George, Newsom’s daughters, court officials and most of all for Missourians. It captures the contradictions of slave laws and how the law failed Celia.
Works Cited
McLaurin, Melton A. Celia, a Slave: A True Story. New York: University of Georgia, 1991.