John Dutton: Antebellum Archetype

An avenue to the protection of the plantation economy is Judge Dutton’s recurring cast of characters in his courtroom dramas like the Brown family and Captain Francis Duplesis. Wealthy planter families in the parish were able to play the parts of the plaintiff, the defendant, and the jury in different slave trials. The Browns are cited in numerous cases including one in 1820 where Josiah and Thomas Brown report another planter’s mistreatment of his slave, Amy. Another simple trial took place where one of their slaves went without paying a toll or receiving consent from Josiah Brown to ride on Thomas Brown’s boat. The Browns go behind the jury stand to sign off on the decision condemning two people for giving Joseph Erwin’s slaves liquor and onions from a flatboat on the Mississippi River. Capt. Francis Duplessis also enjoyed similar legal advantages in an 1830 case regarding his two children, Catharine and Alexander, whom he illegally possessed. The mother of the children was Mrs. Cabot Chessé who was a native of Haiti and a free woman of color but lacked the literacy to seek justice for Catherine and Alexander. Despite her illiteracy, Mrs. Chessé filed a complaint in the Orleans Parish Court to have her attorney, Edmund (also a free person of color), retrieve her precious children from Capt. Duplessis by a writ of Habeas Corpus. Without any consequence specified for Capt. Duplessis, the children were returned, where they would reside in New Orleans with their mother where their family would bear creative descendants of artists and puppeteers in the 1900s. Mrs. Chessé and her children were reunited, but Judge Dutton did not serve justice unto his great friend Capt. Duplessis. Though exciting in a courtroom drama, recurring powerful families are not compelling in an actual slave trial for the sake of collusion. The Browns and Francis Duplessis were always allowed a jury of their peers, literally.

In another case, a member of the Brown family decided the fate of a nonwhite “peer.” Jaques was a free man of color who was a slaveholder in Iberville Parish. In 1843, he filed with the parish court under John Dutton, that one slave belonging to him and the other belonging to his neighbor attempted to kill Jacques. In this case, the testimony of the slaves is shockingly read and used for judgment. John Dutton released the two slaves, finding them not guilty of attempted murder, and one of the slaves would continue to be owned by Jacques’. Free people of color in Louisiana were supposedly lavishing in legal and social rights, however, Jacques’ story reveals otherwise. Jacques’ wealth and even slave ownership were not enough to surmount the color of his skin in the eyes of the court in Iberville Parish. But, the true colors of Dutton’s Iberville Parish Court shine with an unignorable brightness during slave trials on alleged insurrections and violence against white slave owners.

Judge Dutton and the jury of his white peers institutionally silenced slaves by prohibiting their rights to testify in most cases but still trying for a guilty or not guilty plea in cases of slaveholders’ blindly trusted accusations. Slaves Charlotte and Tom (of two different planters) felt the brunt of the forcefully discriminatory court when Judge Dutton punished their alleged threat of insurrection by hanging, an unfortunately usual form of capital punishment. Primus, a slave of a West Baton Rouge planter, however, did not fear Judge Dutton’s habitual violent punishments for insurrection. He was a frequent runaway, often participating in marronage, for even a taste of freedom. In an attempt to taste the freedom he craved, he pleaded not guilty on a charge of threatening to shoot two men to begin a slave revolt. Judge Dutton then mercilessly exacted the guilty verdict sentencing Primus to a violently cruel display of capital punishment: hanging between the Andrew and Lauve plantations and displaying Primus’ head on a pole on the levee.

In 1843, Joseph Schlatre brought charges against his slave Anthony for striking his son with an ax to which Anthony pleaded not guilty. Despite his not guilty plea, Judge Dutton and his band of jurors continued on their rampage of capital punishment. Anthony faced his own untimely, unjust, and inhumane death as it was forced upon him and remained utterly fearless in true “give me liberty or give me death” fashion.

The one-sidedness of cases in John Dutton’s court and other southern courts in this period exemplifies the violent legal silence for enslaved people both statutorily and personally enforced. Though enslaved individuals could plead guilty or not guilty, such pleas were disregarded as enslaved people were not allowed attorneys or the ability to understand court proceedings. Charlotte, Tom, Primus, and Anthony were not permitted to exist outside of oppressive court records and censuses classifying them by their status as owned individuals. While these slaves are not even listed with their full names and mere scraps of paper are left for historians to assemble their legacy, the Schlatre Plantation is privately owned today and featured in the Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Duplesis family’s car dealership has hundreds of vehicles branded with their name.