## Facts

- Elisha Brazealle, a Mississippi slaveholder, traveled in 1826 to Ohio with an enslaved woman and her son, John Monroe Brazealle, intending to free them and return to Mississippi with them.
- In Ohio, Elisha executed a deed purporting to emancipate the woman and John, and then returned with them to Jefferson County, Mississippi, where they lived until his death.
- Elisha later executed a will reciting the prior deed of emancipation, stating an intent to ratify it, and devising all his property to John, whom he acknowledged as his son.
- After Elisha’s death, the will was probated and executors took possession of the estate.
- Elisha’s collateral heirs filed a chancery bill claiming the Ohio emancipation was void under Mississippi law and policy, and that John remained a slave incapable of inheriting or holding property.
- Defendants demurred to the bill; the chancellor overruled the demurrer; defendants appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether Mississippi must recognize an emancipation deed executed in Ohio by a Mississippi citizen when the emancipation was intended to circumvent Mississippi’s manumission laws.
2. If the emancipation is invalid in Mississippi, whether a person deemed a slave can take property by devise or have property held in trust for his benefit.
3. Whether heirs at law may renounce benefits under a will and claim the estate as if the offending provisions were absent.

## Decision

- The appellate court held the Ohio deed of emancipation was void in Mississippi because it was executed in fraud and evasion of Mississippi’s manumission law and public policy.
- The court treated John and his mother as remaining slaves under Mississippi law and therefore as part of the decedent’s estate.
- The court held a slave cannot take property by devise and property cannot be held in trust for a slave’s benefit.
- The court concluded the heirs’ bill stated a valid claim notwithstanding the demurrer, supporting the heirs’ entitlement to the estate rather than John.

## Legal Principles

- A forum state may refuse to recognize or enforce an out-of-state act by its citizen when doing so would violate the forum’s law or public policy, including when the act is undertaken to evade the forum’s restrictions.
- Under Mississippi’s then-existing manumission regime, emancipation required compliance with specified formalities and legislative ratification; an attempted emancipation outside that regime could be treated as invalid in Mississippi.
- A person legally treated as a slave lacks capacity to take property by will, and a testamentary trust for a slave’s benefit is likewise ineffective.
- Heirs at law may disclaim reliance on a will’s provisions and pursue the estate by operation of law when the dispositive provisions fail.

## Conclusion

The court refused to give effect in Mississippi to an Ohio emancipation undertaken to avoid Mississippi’s manumission restrictions and held that, because the purported beneficiary was legally a slave, he could not inherit by devise or through a trust, leaving the estate to pass to the heirs at law.


Hinds v. Brazealle, 3 Miss. (2 How.) 837 (Miss. High Ct. Errors & Appeals 1838)