Notes from Davis’ first few classes in the senior law class are organized in a set of six lectures. First, Blatterman provides an outline of these lectures, and then repeats these notes in greater detail. Introductory lectures on the general principles of “Municipal Law,” “Civil Law,” and “Absolute Rights” precede the sixth, final lecture of the set, the somewhat more particular (and topical) lecture on slavery, titled “Master v. Servant.” This lecture establishes a legal definition of “master” and different types of “servants,” including but not limited to enslaved persons, though slavery quickly becomes the focus of the discussion. Davis noted that Blackstone did not identify “slave” as a kind of servant, and that such a designation did not exist in English common law. Having covered the legal definition of a “master,” Davis reviews the types of servantry outlined in Blackstone’s Commentaries. Davis then suggests that “in this state” they might add a fifth category, slaves. He immediately transitions to the Code of Justinian and his Law of Persons.
“Blackstone divides servants into 4 sorts. I. Menial servants II. domestics, apprentices, laborers III. Stuarts, factors IV. agents, to who in this state we must add slaves. This last species of servants does not exist in England & is unknown to the common law. Here, they constitute a very large clap in the community. Blackstone says, that a state of slavery is repugnant to reason & the principles of natural law. This opinion, I am not disposed to contravene. The three origins of the right of slavery , assigned by Justinian in his institutes, viz: birth, when the mother was a slave, captivity in war, & the voluntary sale of himself by a freeman, are, I think shown by Blackstone, to rest on unsound foundations.” (pp. 64-65)
In this section of Blatterman’s lecture notes, Davis takes up concern about the relationship between enslavers and enslaved persons in the event of emancipation. In the following excerpt, he appears to muse about the implications of upending the existent socioeconomic order of the time underpinned by the institution of slavery, deploying a famous Jeffersonian metaphor that arose in the context of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Davis ends this section of the lecture with an extended monologue on what he perceives to be the dangers of abolition and how the issue might be settled.
“For, if all owning slaves had been willing to yield them up, what was to be done with them? Where were they to be removed to?, and for them to live amongst us as free persons was entirely out of the question. In the language of Mr. Jefferson, we had the wolf by the ear, and to hold him or let him go would be attended with equal (danger) difficulty and inconvenience. [...] All that our circumstances have, hitherto permitted, we have done, as we have made that relation as just and mild as is compatible with the public safety, and with the existence and preservation of that kind of prosperity, and I doubt not that these people, are more comfortable and happy than the lower classes of people, in any other country. The rapid increase of this clap, the insecurity and danger which even now result from it, which every year, is fearfully resulting & augmenting the injurious influence which the existence of slavery exerts on our national prosperity have recently induced an effort on the part of our legislature to effect its gradual abolition, whether or not, this grand object shall be obtained it remains for the people to determine.” (pp. 66-67)
The last discussion of slavery in Blatterman’s notes (meaning from all the student notes available on Davis’s lectures) includes an undated note about an enslaver’s right of punishment toward those they held in bondage.
“As to the master’s right of punishing the servant, a more correct view of the subject wd. have been , to have regarded the common law, as regulating the relations, between man & man, prescribing the duties & rights between man & man, of all, and the punishment attending their violation, & then enquiring how far the existing relation between master and slave should operate, to except from the common law the acts of masters towards their slaves. The master stands in loco parentis.” (p. 72)