Levi Woodbury

“ So whether a sound distinction may not exist at times between a mortgage and a sale, need not be examined, though it is more customary in all mortgages for the mortgager honestly to retain the possession, than to pass it to the mortgagee. ”

“ James L. Dawson, James Smith, William Dawson, and others, had since got possession of these negroes, some of one portion of them and some of another. And that, although they were bought with full notice of Merrill's prior rights to them under the above mortgage, yet the respondents all refuse to deliver them to him, or pay their value and hire towards the discharge of the mortgage. Whereupon he prayed that each of them be required to deliver up the negroes in his possession, and account for their hire or to pay their value. ”

“ The injury is in not giving it up when called for then, or in not then paying the mortgage, and not in receiving it some years before, and not paying its value at that time.
[p397] This is not trover or trespass for the taking ofit originally, but a bill in chancery to foreclose the redemption of it by a decree, and hence its value at the time of the decree is the test of what the mortgagee loses, if the property is not then surrendered.
There is another exception to the estimate made of the value of the hire of the slaves. ”