This deals clearly with the cases, and provides a useful introduction. Attention should be paid to the tendency to use "slave" and "white man" as alternatives. You do it, because the cases do it. But of course the real issue is whether the person is free or slave. North Carolina judges talk as though there are no free black people, as other slave state judges tend increasingly in the late 18th and then in the 19th century to do. Ruffin's rhetoric shows clearly why this is necessary, in the master's mind: slaves, aware that free bblack people exist, will become "discontented" with their condition. This is evident nonsense: slaves knew perfectly well that free black people existed. But the pressure to make blackness exactly coincident with enslavement grew as the very precariousness of the system became ever clearer to the master class.