At Least Some Rights the White Man Was Bound to Respect: Bland v. Beverly and a Contract for Freedom in the Age of Slavery

Authors

H. Robert Baker

Abstract

By law in Maryland, slaves could not enter into legally binding contracts. Nonetheless, in 1833 Beverly Dowling struck an agreement with his owner, Sophia Bland, for his freedom in exchange for $200. Dowling paid $173 towards his end of the agreement before being arrested as a runaway and sold to a slave trader. Beverly Dowling petitioned the Baltimore city court for his freedom, and a jury found that he was free because he had, in the process of raising the money to pay his owner, traveled to the state of New York to work. I survey the law of manumission in Maryland and analyze the opinion of the court of appeals (Maryland's highest appellate court) in Bland v. Dowling (1837). I conclude that the case was both narrower and broader than scholars have surmised. It was narrow in the sense that the court of appeals relied on a straightforward reading of Maryland law to create a limited holding of freedom for Beverly Dowling. But in the process, it recognized the right of free blacks in Baltimore to work, keep wages, sue and be sued, and to travel. Twenty years before Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Court of Appeals of Maryland had declared that black people had at least some rights that the white man was bound to respect.

Disciplines

Constitutional Law | Contracts | Human Rights Law | Law | Law and Race | Law and Society | Legal History

Recommended Citation

H. R. Baker, At Least Some Rights the White Man Was Bound to Respect: Bland v. Beverly and a Contract for Freedom in the Age of Slavery, 25 Cardozo J. Equal Rts. & Soc. Just. 409 (2019).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/cardozoersj/vol25/iss3/2