freedom. After C'sdeath, the question arose whether his children were entitled to inherit property
through C from A. Dulaney said they were not.

I adopt the rule of the civil law ... that slaves are incapable of marriage. ... slaves
are bound by our criminal laws generally, yet we do not consider them as the
objects of such laws as relate to commerce between the sexes. A slave has never
maintained an action against the violator of his bed. A slave is not admonished for
incontinence, or punished for fornication or adultery; never prosecuted for bigamy
or petty treason, for killing a husband being a slave... In consequence of my
opinion, that slaves are incapable of civil marriage, I consider A and C in the light
of bastards, and therefore conclude that the lands of A are escheatable;   A and C
had no civil capacities to take by purchase, or to take or transmit by descent, whilst
in their original state of slavery. Their capacity sprung from the manumission; it
cannot be pretended that the manumission could have a retrospect to their births.198

In other words, although A was a free negro who lawfully owned real property, his slave
parents could not, in the eyes of the law, be married. Thus A was a bastard and on his death his
property could not be inherited by his parents or by his brother. Further, since C was a slave at
the time of A's death, C could not inherit property from A in any event. Dulaney's opinion was
an accurate statement of the law, and it demonstrated the dreadful status of the slave. The
marriage, which the General Assembly found itself unable to dissolve in 1682,199 had become a
nullity by 1767.

The final case involving claims of freedom was brought in 1770 by the descendants of
Irish Nell, Lord Baltimore's irish servant who had married a black slave. Pointing to the repeal of
the law of 1664 and the provisions of the 1681 Act which Lord Baltimore had secured in reaction
to Nell's situation, her descendants argued that descendants of a white woman and a slave who
were born after the date of the 1664 statute's repeal were free under the 1681 Act. The Provincial
Court agreed, but the Court of Appeals reversed it in 1771, apparently on the ground that Nell's
marriage was contracted before the 1681 Act and therefore all her children were bom slaves
subject to the 1664 statute.200   This construction of the Act demonstrates the respect for property
rights in slaves that prevented subsequent statutes from being read to affect those rights.

These three decisions outline the bleak legal picture for slaves in colonial Maryland in the
eighteenth century. They had lost the capacity, which had been recognized om. the seventeenth
century to enter into legally sanctioned family relationships. The Courts were set against
releasing slaves into freedom, sanctioning the enslavement of blacks in Africa and the
perpetuation of property rights in slaves in America.

The slave's status may be summarized simply. In two respects, he was treated as a human
being. He was capable of being baptized and becoming a Christian. Further, he was responsible
for his criminal behavior. For minor offenses (whether or not criminal in nature) involving ten
lashes or less, his master was the sole court. For more stringent punishment, he was to be tried by

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