Roundtree v. Baker

• Decision Date: 30 September 1869
• Citation: Roundtree v. Baker, 52 Ill. 241, 1869 WL 5419, 4 Am.Rep. 597 (Ill. 1869)
• Parties: DUDLEY R. ROUNDTREE, Administrator,v.MARVIN BAKER, Administrator.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

52 Ill. 241

1869 WL 5419 (Ill.)

4 Am.Rep. 597

DUDLEY R. ROUNDTREE, Administrator,

v.MARVIN BAKER, Administrator.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

September Term, 1869.

WRIT OF ERROR to the Circuit Court of Knox county; the Hon. ARTHUR A. SMITH, Judge, presiding.

The question presented in this case is, whether a contract executed in a State where slavery existed, for the purchase price of a negro slave, will be enforced in the courts of this State.

Mr. A. M. CRAIG, for the plaintiff in error.

It is a general rule of law, well settled, that the law of the place where the contract is made, and not where the action is brought is to govern in enforcing and expounding the contract, and in determining its validity. Bradshaw v. Newman, Breese, 94; Stacy v. Baker, 1 Scammon, 417; Phinney v. Baldwin, 16 Ill. 108; Cox et al, v. The United States, 6 Peters, 172.

This contract was made in Kentucky, and was a valid contract by the laws of Kentucky. If an action had been brought on this contract in Kentucky, the courts of that State must have sustained its validity, and enforced its execution; and this court can judicially take notice of this contract only by the light of the laws where the contract was made. Smith et al. v. Whitaker et al. 23 Ill. 367.

The law of the remedy is no part of the contract. Wood et al. v. Child et al. 20 Ill. 209. See, also, 2 Salkeld, 666; Hone v. Ammons, 14 Ill. 29; Commonwealth v. Aves, 18 Pick. 215.

Messrs. HANNAMAN & KRETZINGER, for the defendant in error.

The recognition of comity is based on the principle of reciprocity, and reciprocity in this country must be founded on the consent of the States to the legality and justness of the subject matter of contracts, and the equal mutual benefits or rights to be yielded or enjoyed. No such relation can exist between a slave-holding and non-slave-holding State.

The contract sought to be enforced contains the terms of the sale and purchase of a negro girl. It bears the taint of slavery, and slavery is offensive to the good morals of a people.

Sir William Blackstone declares, in his Coms. v. 1, p. 423, that slavery rests on an unsound foundation, and insists that it is repugnant to reason, and exists in utter violation of the natural laws. Fahrs v. Cochran, 3 Dowl. and Ryl. 679; S. C. 2, Barn. and Cressw. 448; Wayland's Elmt. of Moral Science, 209; Rutherford's Inst. Nat. Law, bk. 1, c. 20; Stroud's Sketch of the Laws relating to the laws of slavery in the United States, 25.

It is well settled by the current of authorities, that comity will be denied upon general principles, by the courts of free States, on contracts arising upon slavery. And still less is the doctrine of comity admissible in the case at bar, when the contract, itself, by its express terms, is opposed to the policy which the people of Illinois thought proper to adopt, in the foundation of their State government; and in direct violation of the express provisions of sec. 1 and 2 of article 6. of the original constitution of Illinois. No State is bound, or ought to enforce or hold valid, in its courts of justice, any contract which violates any provision of its own statute law; and if any contract is entered into without the State, and the consideration moving to either party, is positively forbidden by the written law of the State where the litigation arises, a court of justice will not enforce it, and surely it ought not, when such enforcement would be a violation of the law which it is bound to administer.

Mr. Justice STORY says, “that the state of slavery will not be recognized in any country whose institutions and policy prohibit slavery.” Story's Conflict of Laws, sec. 104. And further, to the same point, in the same work, sec. 253, it is stated that “contracts to carry into effect the African slave trade, or the rights of slavery in countries which refuse to acknowledge its lawfulness, &c. would be held utterly void, whatever might be their validity in the country where they are made, as being inconsistent with the duties, the policy, or the institutions of other countries where they are sought to be enforced.”

Mr. JUSTICE WALKER delivered the opinion of the Court:

This was an action of debt, brought by plaintiff in error, in the Knox circuit court, against defendant in error, on a writing obligatory, entered into in the State of Kentucky, by Turner R. Roundtree to Dudley Roundtree, given for the price of a negro girl sold by the latter to the former. It appears, the instrument sued on bears date the tenth of October, 1833; is for four hundred dollars, payable in equal annual installments of twenty dollars each, the first payable on the last day of December, 1834. It was stipulated that plaintiff in error is the administrator of Dudley Roundtree, deceased; that the girl, Eliza, named in the writing obligatory, was a slave in the State of Kentucky, owned by Dudley Roundtree, and that, as such, by the laws of Kentucky, she was liable to sale at the time the instrument was executed. That she was sold and delivered in the State of Kentucky by Dudley Roundtree to Turner Roundtree, who resided in this State, on the tenth of October, 1833, and the writing obligatory was given in Kentucky on the purchase of the girl. Defendant below filed a plea of nil debet upon which there was an issue to the country; next, a plea of the statute of limitations; third, that the instrument was given for the purchase of a negro girl, and hence the consideration had failed; fourth, that the writing obligatory was given for the balance of the price of a negro girl, who was free and was sold as stated in the instrument sued upon, and the consideration had therefore failed. To the second plea, plaintiff replied that the cause of action had accrued within sixteen years. Plaintiff below interposed a demurrer to the third and fourth pleas, which was overruled by the court. He then replied to the third plea that, by the laws of Kentucky, the girl was a slave, and liable to be sold as such, and the consideration had not failed; and to the fourth, that the girl was not free, and was under the laws of Kentucky liable to sale, she being a slave. Issues were joined upon these replications.

At the February term, 1869, the cause was tried before the court, without the intervention of a jury, by consent of the parties, when the court found for defendant; a motion for a new trial was overruled, and a judgment was entered in favor of the defendant for costs. The record is brought to this court on error, and we are asked to reverse the judgment of the court below because it is against the law.

It is a general rule, that we look to the law of the place where the contract is entered into, and not where it is to be enforced, to ascertain its validity; and not only so, but in expounding its terms and conditions. Bradshaw v. Newman, Breese, 133; Stacy v. Baker, 1 Scam. 417; Phinney v. Baldwin, 16 Ill. 108. In the case of Adams v. Robertson, 37 Ill. 45, the rule was announced, that the laws of every country allow parties to enter into obligations with reference to the laws of the country where such obligations are to be performed, and although such obligations may not be in accordance with the laws of the country where they are entered into, as regards agreements to be performed where they are made, they may be strictly in conformity with the laws of the country where they are to be performed. But there is a limitation on this law of comity which requires that the contract, when entered into, must conform to the laws of the country where made, or else to the laws of the country where it is to be performed. The rights enforced by courts, where the contract is made in one country, to be performed in another, are those given by the laws of the country where the contract was made, and such rights are enforced in the country where the contract is to be performed, not as a matter of strict right, but as a matter of comity extended toward the country in which the contract was made. It was again said, in the case of Lewis v. Headly, 36 Ill. 433, that it is a presumption of law, where there is no agreement to the contrary, that a contract is to be performed in the country where it is made.

There is to this general rule a further limitation which is, that the courts of one...