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by a man who had the legal possession temporarily of such slaves, it is not necessary for the court now to enquire,” ruled Field.
He described Mary Maddox’s removal of Kitty and her family to Pennsylvania as “an illegal act” since the slaves were the property of the ‘‘legal representative of the testator.” Kitty’s departure was “substantially an escape by the plaintiffs from their legal owner in Virginia,” the judge concluded, characterizing her claim to freedom based on Pennsylvania law as a “mere technical objection.”
The court records are silent on what happened next to Kitty Payne. Did she remain in bondage in Rappahannock? Was she sold to a slave trader? Was she separated from her children? Did she live to see freedom again at the end of the Civil War?
You hope that she did; that she endured long enough to achieve finally that “perfect freedom, free from the control, claim or demands of any and all, person or persons whatsoever,” the perfect freedom that she and her children deserved.
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