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Supreme Court of New Jersey • 1845

State v. Post

20 N.J.L. 368

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Takeaway

In short, the Court held that New Jersey’s 1844 declaration of natural liberty did not, without explicit abolition language, free people still held under the State’s existing slavery and gradual-abolition laws.

Background

The cases came to the Supreme Court of New Jersey on writs of habeas corpus to test the effect of New Jersey’s newly adopted 1844 Constitution on slavery and related compulsory service. In State v. Post, William, a Black man born before New Jersey’s 1804 gradual-abolition statute, was claimed as a slave for life. A companion case, State v. Van Beuren, involved a child of a slave held to service under the gradual-abolition laws.

The challengers argued that the Constitution’s declaration that “[a]ll men are by nature free and independent” immediately ended slavery and involuntary apprenticeship in New Jersey. The claimed owners relied on New Jersey’s longstanding slave laws and on the constitutional schedule preserving existing individual claims and rights. No lower-court judgment is reported; the habeas proceedings were brought to the state’s highest court for resolution.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether slavery legally existed in New Jersey when the 1844 Constitution took effect.

Holding

Yes. Slavery remained a legally recognized institution in New Jersey at the Constitution’s adoption.

Reasoning

Justice Nevius concluded that colonial and state enactments unmistakably recognized slavery as a legal relation. Those laws regulated masters’ authority over enslaved people, restricted enslaved people’s conduct, governed manumission, and otherwise treated the master’s claim to a slave’s labor and person as a legally protected right.

The 1798 statute expressly provided that people then held as slaves for life would remain slaves for life unless lawfully manumitted. The 1804 and 1820 gradual-abolition statutes altered the status of children born after 1804, but did not free people who were already slaves for life.

The Court acknowledged that slavery had nearly disappeared in practice, due both to gradual abolition and voluntary manumission. But the institution’s decline did not itself repeal the laws governing the remaining enslaved people or eliminate masters’ legally recognized rights and obligations.

Issue #2

Whether Article I, section 1 of the 1844 New Jersey Constitution abolished slavery by declaring that all men are by nature free and independent and possess natural and unalienable rights.

Holding

No. The declaration was an abstract statement of political principle, not a self-executing constitutional command abolishing slavery or invalidating existing slave laws.

Reasoning

The Court read the clause according to its language and placement in the bill of rights. In its view, the provision expressed a general political principle about the people’s right, in their social capacity, to establish a government and enact laws for their security and happiness; it did not define or alter every person’s private, domestic, or legal status.

A statement that people are free and independent could not mean that every natural right was absolute in civil society. Individuals necessarily surrender or have their liberty regulated by law when they enter society, and legal relations involving authority and subordination—including other domestic relations—exist under every government.

The Court reasoned that, if the constitutional convention had intended to abolish slavery, divest masters of rights recognized by statute, and end the related duty to maintain enslaved people unable to support themselves, it would have used clear and direct language. It would not have left consequences of that magnitude to implication from a broad declaration of natural rights.

The Court distinguished Massachusetts decisions treating slavery as inconsistent with that state’s declaration that all persons are born free and equal. New Jersey’s language differed, and, more importantly, New Jersey had repeatedly established and regulated slavery by law. The Court also noted that similarly worded declarations in Virginia had not been understood to abolish slavery.

Issue #3

Whether the Constitution’s preservation of existing individual claims and rights protected a master’s asserted rights in enslaved people and preserved compulsory service under the gradual-abolition statutes.

Holding

Yes. Existing legally established rights, including the claimed rights at issue, continued unless clearly displaced by the Constitution.

Reasoning

The constitutional schedule provided that existing writs, actions, claims, and rights of individuals and corporations would continue as though no constitutional change had occurred. Because the owner’s claim to William’s services was recognized by preexisting law, the Court held that this saving provision reinforced the conclusion that the Constitution did not silently extinguish it.

The same conclusion governed the companion case involving a child bound to service under the 1820 gradual-abolition statute. That statutory system remained in force because the Constitution did not expressly or necessarily invalidate it.

The Court therefore ordered William remanded to the defendant’s custody and reached the same result in State v. Van Beuren. The Court stressed that judges may declare the law but may not repeal an existing legal institution merely because they regard it as unjust or politically harmful.

Concurrences

Justice Randolph

Reasoning

Justice Randolph agreed that both habeas applicants must lose, but offered a more detailed account of why the constitutional language did not operate as an abolition provision. He treated the opening clauses of the bill of rights chiefly as a preamble or statement of general principles, rather than as operative restrictions on preexisting laws, except where a clause uses mandatory language.

He relied on the convention’s drafting history. The original language stated that all men were “born equally free and independent,” but the convention replaced “born equally” with “by nature.” In his view, that change confirmed that the clause referred to freedom in a state of nature, not to a present guarantee that every person in New Jersey was born legally free.

Randolph also emphasized the consequences of the contrary reading. If the general clause invalidated every relation of legal dependence or subordination, its logic could threaten not only slavery but also familiar domestic and legal relationships. The Constitution, he concluded, preserved existing rights and laws unless it clearly changed them.

He distinguished Massachusetts on the ground that slavery had not been legally established there in the same manner as in New Jersey. He also pointed to Virginia and Vermont as examples showing that broad declarations of natural rights were not necessarily understood to end all involuntary service. For Randolph, abolition was a matter for legislation, not judicial implication from general constitutional language.

Dissents

Chief Justice Hornblower

Reasoning

Chief Justice Hornblower dissented from the Court’s judgment. The reported opinion identifies his disagreement but does not provide a separate written opinion or state the reasoning supporting his dissent.