Judge Thomas Ruffin and the Shadows of Southern History

Judge Thomas Ruffin and the Shadows of Southern History
by Sally Greene

North Carolina's State Capitol still houses a statue to one of southern history's most notorious pro-slave-owner judges. Why?

"Ruffin was ideologically sympathetic to the Confederate cause and remained so to his death. 'The power of the master must be absolute,' Ruffin wrote in State v. Mann (1829), 'to render the submission of the slave perfect.' State v. Mann became the most notorious opinion in the entire body of slavery law."