Stealing Slaves in Missouri in 1822

[Slavery]: [Missouri]:

[Three Early Court Documents Concerning the Theft of Three Slaves in Howard County, Missouri].

Howard County, Mo. 1822. Three documents totaling [3]pp. folio, the two earliest documents written on each side of the same leaf, with an integral blank, and attached to the third document with sealing wax, each document docketed on verso. Some short separations along folds, minor spotting, two short tape repairs. Good. Item #4276

A series of three documents recording a case of slave theft in Missouri. The plaintiff in the case, George W. Hardin sues a man named Urial Bailey for stealing three slaves from the Hardin estate in Howard County, Missouri. The first document is a sworn oath, dated May 23, 1822, by George Hardin stating that "He was lawfully possessed of the negroes...and that the same were unlawfully taken by Urial Bailey...from his properties and with out his consent within one year last past and that he is now lawfully entitled to the possession of the said negroes." The document is attested by the clerk and signed by Hardin.

The second document is executed by Hardin's lawyers on the verso of his oath, dated the same day, and constitutes an order from the court to the Sheriff of Howard County informing him that "George W. Hardin hath come into the Circuit Court held in the town of Franklin and found sufficient sureties as well as his clamour to prosecute for a certain woman called Dolly about the age of twenty eight years also one negro boy of about the age of nine years named Nathan, also one negro girl called Eliza about the age of three years all the property of the said Plaintiff...which a certain Uriel Bailey...hath taken and unjustly detains.... You are hereby commanded that the said goods...be delivered to the said George W. Hardin and that...Uriel Bailey appear before the said Circuit Court to be held at the town of Franklin."

The third document is executed by Hardin's lawyers on the verso of his oath, dated September 1822, and lays out the facts of the case. It reads, in part: "George W. Hardin by his Attorney [Tompkins & French] complains of Urial Bailey that he took [the previously named slaves] of great value. To wit of the value of fifteen hundred dollars...where fore the said Plaintiff saith that he is injured and hath sustained damages to the value of five hundred dollars and therefore he brings suit." Interestingly, in this document, Hardin's lawyers refer to the youngest slave, Eliza, as a "mulatto girl." Docketing on the integral blank attached to the oath and lawyer's document, dated May 23, 1822, indicate that Hardin was seeking "Replevin Damages" of $500, which the court seems to grant.

The motive behind Urial (or Uriel) Bailey's thefts are not recorded here, but the issue of slave stealing was not uncommon, and had been going on in the American colonies and the fledgling United States for a long time. According to Timothy F. Reilly in "Slave Stealing in the Early Domestic Trade as Revealed by a Loyal Manservant," (published in Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 55, No. 1, Winter 2004, pp.5-39): "Slave stealing plagued domestic slaveholders as far back as the colonial period when those who would unlawfully deprive a property owner of human chattel were detested as 'Negro jockeys.' Whether operating in the northern or southern colonies, a 'man-stealer' lurking about either as a piratical thief or as a high-minded abolitionist was guilty of one of the worst crimes against the sanctity of property.... By the 1830s, man stealing reached epidemic levels in parts of the South."

Despite the seeming prevalence of slave theft for a long period of time in the United States, primary source records of court cases are very scarce.

Price: $1,250