James Madison stated in Federalist No. 54 that slaves are in some respects regarded by our laws as persons, and some respects as property.
I cannot think of any examples confirming the former.
Thanks.
Well, that’s what led to the Three-Fifths Compromise.
For the purposes of representation, the South wanted them to be persons, but for the purposes of population-assessed taxation, they wanted them to be chattel. In the Constitutional Convention, the framers agreed to considering them 3/5 of a person for both purposes.
(But you knew that.)
In matters such as murder, slaves were treated as persons to a certain degree. If they were accused of murder, they were tried in a court of law. If they were the victims of murder, their alleged murderers could be tried (although the often were not).
(The practice of lynching became prevalent *afterp/i] the civil war, with rather fewer examples between the War for Independence and the Civil War.)
I think that at least some jurisdictions had laws on the books that protected slaves from extreme forms of cruelty at the hands of their masters. I read an article once about some prominent family in New Orleans who routinely tortured their slaves to death for sport, but that local authorities were afraid to prosecute them because they feared that this family was in league with The Devil (or something like that).