Description

Born Free

Samuel Howell stood before the General Court of Virginia. Howell was of mixed race. His grandmother was a free white woman, while his grandfather was black. Virginia law at the time required that children of such a union were destined for servitude until age 3. Slavery. Howell’s mother, therefore, was an indentured servant, but the law said nothing about the grandchildren. 

Samuel Howell, the grandson, was an indentured servant by force who sought his freedom. He took the matter to court in a now famous case called Howell vs Netherland.

The attorney representing Howell argued the case eloquently, declaring: 

“Under the law of nature, all men are born free, everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because [it is] necessary for his own sustenance. The reducing the mother to servitude was a violation of the law of nature: surely then the same law cannot prescribe a continuance of the violation to her issue, and that too without end, for if it extends to any, it must to every degree of descendants.”

It was a flawless argument. Consider those words again, “Under the law of nature all men are born free. Everyone comes into this world with a right to his own person…. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given to him by the author of nature.”

True as those words sound now, they were revolutionary when this case was argued in April 1770. The Judge wouldn’t hear it and ruled against Samuel Howell. He lost the case, but the ideas, the philosophy, the doctrine of that young attorney would in the end triumph and change all human history. That young attorney was 27-year-old Thomas Jefferson. 

Source:

https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/thomas-jeffersons-argument-in-howell-v-netherland-1770/