James Moore Wayne

“ The appellant proved, at the time the deed of manumission was made, that Rachel Wallingsford was his lawful wife. It also appears, by a petition filed by the appellant in the county court of Prince George county, Maryland, to get the interlocutory order for alimony suspended, and which is in evidence in the cause, that the appellant and his wife, having had repeated disagreements, as she alleged on account of her husband's habitual incontinency with a woman in their own house, Mrs Wallingsford left her habitation and refused to live with him. ”

“ If this construction of the act does not prevail, there can be no fixed age in childhood when manumission can take effect; and the act would be made to operate differently upon persons by no certain rule. The legislature having laid down the age after which manumission shall not be made, a strong presumption is raised that it did not mean to exclude all infants absolutely from the benefits of the act, or it would have said so in terms; or have fixed an age when, in childhood, manumission should be allowed. ”

“ In regard to grants from the husband to the wife, an examination of the cases in the books will show, when they have not been sustained in equity, it has been on account of some feature in them impeaching their fairness and certainty, as that they were not in the nature of a provision for the wife ”

“ It would be an unreasonable restraint upon the privileges of manumission, as it is granted in this act, if it were interpreted to exclude the manumission of mother and an infant child, the former being of healthy constitution and able to maintain it, as of other children who, in the natural progress of human life would be able, in a few years, to maintain themselves by labour, and who would find in their adolescence, persons who would gladly maintain them for the services they could render. ”

“ But the slave manumitted must either be positively in the latter predicament; or be so decrepid, if under the age of forty-five; and if neither one nor the other, and being in infancy, it must stand so unrelated to any other free person coloured or white, that it can have no claim, natural or artificial, to support from any one ”