Running, Hiding, and Hoping

By denying black people their inherent freedom - cosubstantial with human existence - slaveowners forged a new sub-species, not wholly human nor inanimate. They drafted laws upholding this twisted new genotype and theory of being in the New World. This study examines that theorem in practice through five court cases in 18th and 19th century England and America involving enslaved persons. It provides a chance to see the property-liberty nexus at work as justification for slavery's existential contradiction: the creation and commodification of a not-quite-human subgenre of humans, deprived of liberty at the foundation of their purportedly diminished humanity.