The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985 Page: 74
476 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
three slaves. They refused to pay, whereupon Arnis instituted a suit for
the hire money. Williams's defense began with the argument that the
"note was fraudulently procured" because the slaves "were not her
property" to hire "but were freed by the proclamation of the President
of the United States on the ist January, 1863, and which proclamation
has since been confirmed by the amendment to the Constitution of
the United States." The District Court of Cherokee County ruled in
favor of Arnis, a decision that was affirmed by the Texas Supreme
Court in a decision written by Justice George W. Smith. The higher
court did not, however, find it necessary to rule on the contention that
the slaves were free because of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Whether they were free or not, Smith wrote, they went into Williams's
employment in 1865, and he had not proven that he had been de-
prived of their labor under the terms of the contract. The court's
decision suggested that slavery had continued in effect in Texas after
January 1, 1863, but, more than two years after Juneteenth, there was
still no definitive statement of slavery's legal death date.5
Two cases, Hall v. Keese and Dougherty v. Cartwright, that came
before the court in its October 1868 session in Austin finally forced
Chief Justice Amos Morrill and his colleagues to face the question
squarely. Known collectively as the Emancipation Proclamation Cases,
one suit arose from a promissory note given to purchase a slave in
January, 1865, and the other from a note given to pay for the hire of
a bondsman for 1865. Chief Justice Morrill, joined by justices Living-
ston Lindsay and Albert H. Latimer, ruled that Lincoln's proclama-
tion was a "war measure" that "did not operate presently upon the
slaves." The Negroes in question were slaves in January, 1865, when
the notes were executed, Morrill wrote, and there was nothing illegal
in the transactions. As to the fact that freedom came later that year,
he was of the opinion that "each party had the same means of know-
ing the future condition of the slave, and acted upon his own ideas as
to the result of the war." Pecuniary losses fell upon the owners of
slaves at the time of their emancipation. In one case, the purchaser
5Williams v. Arnis, 30 Tex. 37-38, 39 (quotations), 40-51. In this case as well as in the
others cited below, much of the material on the court's decision is taken from the
introductory synopsis of that decision; these synopses were generally written by the
reporter of the volume. George W. Smith became a Texas Supreme Court justice on
June 25, 1866, during presidential Reconstruction, and was removed on September io,
1867, after Congress took over. It might be expected, then, that his views would be
essentially conservative and would tend to uphold property rights in slaves. Walter
Prescott Webb, H. Bailey Carroll, and Eldon Stephen Branda (eds.), The Handbook of
Texas (3 vols.; Austin, 1952, 1976), II, 446-447, 623, III, 892.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985, periodical, 1984/1985; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101210/m1/96/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.