Description - Strange True Stories of Louisiana by George Washington Cable
Excerpt: ...of being a white person, without ever having seen the shadow of a title for any one to own her, and with everything to indicate that there was none. Whether he had any better right to own the several other slaves whiter than this one whom those same witnesses of his were forward to state he owned and had owned, no one seems to have inquired. Such were the times; and it really was not then remarkable that this particular case should involve a lady noted for her good works and a gentleman who drove "the finest equipage in New Orleans." One point, in view of current beliefs of to-day, compels attention. One of Miller's witnesses was being cross-examined. Being asked if, should he see the slave woman among white ladies, he would not think her white, he replied: "I cannot say. There are in New Orleans many white persons of dark complexion and many colored persons of light complexion." The question followed: "What is there in the features of a colored person that designates them to be such?" "I cannot say. Persons who live in countries where there are many colored persons acquire an instinctive means of judging that cannot be well explained." And yet neither this man's "instinct" nor that of any one else, either during the whole trial or during twenty years' previous knowledge of the plaintiff, was of the least value to determine whether this poor slave was entirely white or of mixed blood. It was more utterly worthless than her memory. For as to that she had, according to one of Miller's own witnesses, in her childhood confessed a remembrance of having been brought "across the lake"; but whether that had been from Germany, or only from Mobile, must be shown in another way. That way was very simple, and we hold it no longer in suspense. X. THE CROWNING PROOF. "If ever our little Salome is found," Eva Kropp had been accustomed to say, "we shall know her by two hair moles about the...
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