TRANSFIGURATION OF MARYLAND CULTURE, 1791-1802	43

attention to the opinions of Sir Philip York, and chief justice Talbot, they dis-
charged Somerset on the ground that he was emancipated by being in
England' .M Recently, historians have argued that Somerset's case did little to
alter the de facto condition of blacks.2* Many have condemned Mansfield's
attempts to 'dodge' and 'avoid' making a decision 'with far-reaching social
repercussions'.30 Others have shown that the actual language of the decision
was less extreme than the statements attributed to Mansfield in newspapers
and contemporary accounts.11

Certainly the cultural and ideological implications of Somerset's case
were neither immediate nor entirely intended. Still, it would be wrong to con-
clude, as Ashton's lawyers did, that because Mansfield 'wavered much and
was very undecided', his ruling was meaningless." Regardless of what
Mansfield actually said, it was Capel Lofft's widely-circulated account of the
trial which influenced the lawyers and judges involved in Mahoney's case.
Despite Mansfield's desire to limit its scope, his decision soon 'burst the con-
fines' of its original intent and, as Seymour Drescher points out, 'delivered a
deadly blow to slavery in Britain by refusing to uphold the master's right to
disciplinary deportation'.31

Yet the repercussions of Mansfield's ruling went beyond expanding free-
dom from 'the water's edge of Britain to the shores of the colonies'.34
American understandings of liberty were significantly affected. When cou-
pled with the liberalizing forces of the American Revolution, Somerset v.
Stewart inspired several generations of anti-slavery reformers. Most histori-
ans have argued that 'it was not until the abolitionists launched their major
assault against slavery in the 1830s that...[Somerset] became an important
legal precedent'. The case of Mahoney v. Ashton reveals, however, that
Maryland courts were grappling with many of these issues nearly four
decades earlier.35

Numerous scholars have shown how the breach between natural and pos-
itive law influenced the development of antislavery thought.36 Mahoney's
lawyers argued that human bondage was morally reproachable, but neither
Ridgely nor Jennings questioned its legality." Rather than champion a 'high-
er law' invalidating slavery, they maintained that the institution only ceased
to exist when not specifically authorized:

...the act of Joice's landing in England, operated as an emancipation of
her from the bonds of slavery, even if she were a slave before....Even
now, if we advert to the laws of a sister state, Pennsylvania, if a person
from this state carries a slave into that state, and keeps him there six
months, the slave becomes free and emancipated, and could not be held
in slavery if he returned again to this state. So it was with Joice, and her
issue, after she went to England.38