The Court of Public Opinion? Masters, Slaves, and Character Evidence in the St. Louis Circuit Court’s Freedom Suits

In the spring of 1830, as the Duncan family prepared to defend themselves against a freedom suit, they attempted to paint the plaintiff, their slave Vincent, as both headstrong and unruly, a slave who continually defied his masters. Statements presented to the St. Louis circuit court recalled Vincent as “a trifling fellow” who “made fair promises” he later “evaded,” employed “a good deal of deception,” and became “disobedient and Refuse[d] to Return to the Service of his master” after he was hired out to work at the salines of southeastern Illinois. Another deponent put the situation even more starkly. While “Vincent was at the lick, he run about there doin as he pleased.” Because Vincent’s lengthy stay in Illinois had been entirely of his own making, the Duncans argued, the slave was not entitled to his freedom.

Depositions taken on behalf of the defense, however, simultaneously fashioned something of a counter narrative, one in which Vincent was a gifted—if occasionally duplicitous—negotiator and the Duncans were weak-willed, gullible marks, outsmarted and overmatched by their slave. Vincent and his attorneys built upon such an interpretation with deponents who portrayed the Duncan family as a band of absentee slaveholders. Vincent behaved as he did, they suggested, because the Duncans were unable or unwilling to exercise mastery.

Vincent v. Duncan, and the cases of many like it, suggests the powerful role character evidence played in shaping freedom suits filed in the St. Louis circuit court. In particular, my paper highlights the ways in which slaves were able to put their masters’ reputations on trial by alleging their incompetence, cruelty, and deceitfulness. Doing so, I argue, not only constituted savvy legal strategy but improved slaves’ chances of recovering their freedom.