e deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law
to be _chattels personal_ in the hands of their owners and possessors
and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents,
constructions and purposes whatsoever."[334]

So far then as the relations of master and slave went, the law gave
the former complete control over the slave's time and labor, his food
and clothing, punishment, together with the right to turn him over to
an agent or sell his labor. The slave had no property rights in law,
could be sold, mortgaged, leased or disposed of in payment of debt;
the slave could not be party in a legal action against his master,
could not redeem himself, change his master or make a contract. His
status was hereditary and perpetual both for himself and his children.
In his civil status no slave could be a witness against a white or be
a party to a suit; he was deprived of the benefits of education and in
some States of religious instruction also.[335] The actual status of
the slave was, of course, subject to the varying conditions of the
different sections of a wide area of country, the status of the slave
on a Virginia or North Carolina farm being very different from that of
the field hand on a sugar or cotton plantation of the far South. The
slaveholders also were to a very large extent a law unto themselves.
"On our estates," says DeBow, "we dispense with the whole machinery of
public police and public courts of justice. Thus we try, decide, and
execute the sentences in thousands of cases, which in other countries
would go into the courts."[336] Fanny Kemble describes how she made
use of this autonomous position of the slaveholder on her own
plantation to teach her slave Aleck to read in violation of the
law.[337] This explains the great extremes in southern slavery and the
mistakes of writers who judge the institution as a whole by extreme
cases.[338]

Our conclusion as to the effect upon the Negro himself of slavery will
depend largely upon whether we stress his previous savage estate and
the gain made through contact with a superior civilization or the
inherent evils of slavery itself and their effect upon his character.
That the transition from African savagery to slavery was a gain for
the Negro in many respects will hardly be denied.[339] The field hand
of the plantation of the far South doubtless retained many of his most
primitive savage traits. Olmsted, an unprejudiced observer, describes
him as on t