the Northern barbarians overran Southern Europe, they had no laws but those of conquerors and conquered, victors and captives, yet even by this savage people no distinction was recognized between the killing in cold blood of a slave or a freeman. And shall this court, in the nineteenth century establish a principle too sanguinary for the code even of the Goths and Vandals, and extend to the whole community the right to murder slaves with impunity? The motion to arrest the judgment must be overruled." The defendant was sentenced to hang on July 27th, 1821. I have endeavored as well as possible in the brief time allotted me, to refer to the most important features of our early slave laws. It has not been my purpose to attempt an exhausted research into such legislation,--the object sought being merely to show, as a matter of some historical interest, from an impartial mention of the early acts concerning slavery, that the position of the slave in Mississippi was not as it has sometimes been depicted; that so far from being a creature with no legal status, subject to the whims and caprices of his master,--a mere chattel, over which even the power of life and death might be exercised at will,--he was surrounded by all the protection which just laws, humanely administered, could afford,--that the courts were ever open to him and that he could, and did appeal to them, and not in vain. If any unknown or forgotten facts of historical importance to us have been brought to light, my purpose has been accomplished. We have only touched upon the legislative enactments concerning slavery,--and for us, who know that it existed, it is unnecessary to revert to that higher law which controlled the relations between master and slave, and compelled such conduct toward the latter as made of him in countless instances the devoted friend. Only an affection born of long years of treatment in the main considerate and kind, could have furnished history with the spectacle of the espousal by the slave of his master's cause, in a conflict the end of which meant so much of difference to the two. The four years of faithful devotion to which the women of the South bear willing witness could never have been exhibited by an enslaved people between whom and their masters the relations had been other than those we know to have existed. The society which made possible those relations was unique in the history of civilization,--and in the annals of all the peoples who have passed through bondage the conduct of the negro slave stands without a parallel. FEDERAL COURTS, JUDGES, ATTORNEYS, AND MARSHALS IN MISSISSIPPI, 1798-1898.[96] BY THOMAS McADORY OWEN.