When Indiana's Capital Was Still at Corydon, the State's Supreme Court

Slave Cases expressed.” The court also awarded Polly $26.12 in costs for her trouble. The decision was the unanimous judgm ent of the three justices who were in effect the founding fathers of the court as an institution: James Scott, Jesse Holman, and Isaac Blackford. Scott, Holman, and Blackford constituted the Indiana Supreme Court from the first year of statehood through the end of 1830, and they are well regarded in the legal community to this day. Scott, who authored the Lasselle opinion, had been a member of the territorial general court and the 1816 constitutional convention, where he played a substantial role in drafting the judicial arti cle. Holman studied law with Henry Clay in Lexington, Kentucky, served in the territorial legislature, and later became a United States senator. A graduate of Princeton University, Blackford served as the first speaker of Indiana’s House of Representatives. He served on the Indiana Supreme Court longer than any other person, from 1816 to 1853. We regard him as our John Marshall. Of course, slavery proved to be a resilient institu tion both in law and fact. Where legal prohibitions When Indiana’s capital was still at Corydon, the against slavery held firm, as they did in the Lasselle state’s supreme court was put to an early test—the result case, indentures of servitude were a common tool by of which is still our most famous case, Lasselle v. State which slave owners attempted to retain their servants. (1820). General Hyacinth Lasselle of the case was Thus, in another case from Knox County, G. W. one of Vincennes’s most prom inent citizens. He Johnson of Vincennes executed just such an indenture commanded Fort Harrison during the War of 1812, with Mary Clark a few weeks before the 1816 consti owned Vincennes’s largest hotel, married suitably in tution took effect. The constitution included a to local French gentry, and raised a family of ten provision on servitude invalidating any indenture children, many who later distinguished themselves made after the date of statehood “outside the bounds in fields such as law and journalism. of the state,” but Johnson’s contract of indenture with In 1820 two antislavery advocates organized a Clark was not covered by the literal terms of this relatively friendly lawsuit to test the validity of slave own provision. If anything, the relatively specific nature ership in light of Indiana’s new constitution. The suit of this prohibition could arguably have suggested that sought freedom for a woman known only as Polly, the contracts of other sorts (such as indentures executed daughter of a slave Lasselle had purchased from Native before statehood, or, less plausibly, inside the state Americans in the territory northwest of the Ohio River after statehood) were legally valid. before Virginia ceded it to the federal government and, Holman, who moved to Indiana from Kentucky in 1810 obviously, long before Indiana entered the Union. The in large part to free the slaves he and his wife inherited Circuit Court of Knox County, sitting in Vincennes, from her father, authored the court’s opinion in the case ruled in favor of Lasselle and remanded Polly to his In re Clark (1821). He observed that the constitution took custody, declaring: “As far as it regards the situation of great pains to establish rights for former slaves and the m other of the present applicant, this is now a slave declared that commanding performance of indentures state.” The trial court’s statement likely resonated with was utterly inconsistent with those provisions. He wrote: the substantial part of southern Indiana’s population “Such a performance, if enforced by law, would produce that held views favorable to the institution of slavery. a state of servitude as degrading and demoralizing in its Polly’s lawyers appealed. The Indiana Supreme Court consequences as a state of absolute slavery; and if enforced set her free, observing: “The framers of our constitu under a government like ours, which acknowledges tion intended a total and entire prohibition of slavery personal equality, it would be productive of a state of in this State; and we can conceive of no form of words feelings more discordant and irritating then slavery itself.” in which that intention could have been more clearly The supreme court ordered Mary Clark discharged. 36 TRACES Summer 2 oo 3.

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