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Somerset v. Stuart is probably the most important case ever heard in English common law. I won't bore you with the details, but it involved an African slave named James Somerset who demanded to be freed from his master, Charles Stuart, a Virginia planter. In 1772, he was transferred to England, and there demanded his rights as an free Englishman. Anyway the Court of King's Bench (the supreme court at the time) under Lord Mansfield had this to say:

"...The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory: it's so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged."

Was this one of the reasons for Southern support for the American Rebellion? Did the South fear that, should they lose, that Somerset v. Stuart would be enforced in the colonies?
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