ssory to the
fact.[297]

Virginia had early enacted that slaves should be considered as real
estate in the settlement of inheritances. But the growing tendency to
look upon the slaves in all things else as personal chattels led to
such legal and popular confusion that the Virginia assembly often
observed that they were "real estate in some respects, personal in
others, and both in others." Regardless of such legal complexity it
was not until 1793 that it was enacted that "all negro and mulatto
slaves in all courts of judicature shall be held and adjudged to be
personal estate."

In drawing up the slave code of 1798 Kentucky disregarded the legal
experience of Virginia and her more recent remedial legislation and
enacted that "all negro, mulatto or Indian slaves, in all courts of
judicature and other places within this commonwealth, shall be held,
taken and adjudged to be real estate, and shall descend to the heirs
and widows of persons departing this life, as lands are directed to
descend." It was further provided, however, that "all such slaves
shall be liable to the payment of debts, and may be taken by execution
for that end, as other chattels, or personal estate may be."[298]

Such a law coupled with the legal precedents of Virginia served to
intensify the mixed property conception of the slave. The confusion,
however, was purely legal, for slaves were held in all other respects
as personalty; but in cases of inheritance and the probation of wills
the Kentucky Court of Appeals was often called upon to define clearly
the legal status of the Negro in bondage. The first important decision
was handed down in 1824 in the case of Chinn and wife _vs._ Respass,
in which it was pointed out that while slaves were by law made real
estate for the purpose of descent and dower, yet they had in law many
of the attributes of personal estate. They would pass by a nuncupative
will, and lands would not; they could be limited, in a grant or devise
no otherwise than personal chattels; and personal actions might be
brought to recover the possession of them. Furthermore "they were in
their nature personal estate, being moveable property, and as such
might attend the person of the proprietor wherever he went; and in
practice they were so considered by the people in general."[299]

Conversely, the court was often called upon to interpret the phrase
"personal estate" in wills and contracts, where it appeared without
any other restrictiv