ere to be
regarded.[344] Another owner had the right idea, but defeated his own
intentions by willing all his forty slaves to the Kentucky
Colonization Society. The court held that such an act by no means
freed the slaves and that by the laws of the State until they were
free they could be hired out and the proceeds considered as a part of
the estate.[345]

As in all border States there were many legal battles for freedom,
which involved the question of residence on free soil. These cases
were largely concerned with the question of the right of a citizen of
Kentucky to pass through a free State on business or pleasure attended
by his slaves or servants without losing his right of ownership over
such slaves. The principle involved was early considered in the
Kentucky Court of Appeals and faithfully carried out in succeeding
generations, viz.: that a "fixed residence" or being domiciled in a
non-slaveholding State would operate to release the slave from the
power of the master; but that the transient passing or sojourning
therein had no such effect. In an early case in 1820 involving a suit
for freedom the court held that a person of color from Kentucky who
was permitted to reside in a free State could prosecute his right to
freedom in any other State. It was held to be a vested right to
freedom, which existed wherever he went.[346] In another instance an
owner permitted his slave to go at large for twenty years, but the
court held that that alone did not give him freedom. Still under this
liberty of movement the slave went off into a free State to reside and
the court held that the Negro was then free because his right grew out
of the law of the free State and not out of that in which the owner
resided.[347] An owner permitted his slave to go to Pennsylvania and
remain there for a longer period than six months, with a knowledge of
the law passed in that State in 1780, and the Kentucky Court of
Appeals held that the slave was entitled to his freedom and that even
if the slave had returned to Kentucky his right could be asserted
there just as well as in Pennsylvania.[348] But should a slave go with
his master to a free State and later return to Kentucky with him,
whatever status he had then was to be determined by the law of
Kentucky and not by the rule of any State where the slave might have
been.[349] The fact that a slave stayed in New York for three months
before his return to Kentucky, his owner knowing he was there,