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."
