The U.S. Patent office's refusal to award patents to slaves reinforced the predominant view that African Americans were incapable of significant contributions to technology. The policy also kept slave owners from obtaining patent rights for inventions made by their slaves.

Such was the result when Oscar J. E. Stuart, a white Mississippi planter, wrote to Secretary of Interior Jacob Thompson, also a southerner, on August 25, 1875, to request a patent for a labor saving cotton scraper that Ned, a slave blacksmith on Stuart's plantation, had invented.

Stuart claimed the invention was his because of his belief that all products of Ned's labor " both intellectually [sic] and manual" belonged to Ned's master. But the commissioner of patents, who ruled the case, contending that the recipient of a patent must be a citizen, and since slaves were not regarded as citizens by the U.S. government, patents could not be issued in their name.

That reading of matter angered Stuart, who wrote back that he had not applied for the patent in Ned's name but rather his own. The attorney general concurred with the commissioner, however, ruling in 1858 that," a machine invented by a slave, though it be new and useful, cannot, in the present state of the laws, be patented.

I may add that is such a patent were issued to a master, it would not protect him in the courts against persons who might infringe it." Nevertheless, Stuart began to sell the cotton scraper in 1860, and even justified the invention as a sign, slavery did not corrupt the intellect of slaves. Neither Ned's intellect nor person was ever heard of again.

© Sep 2007 By Afromerica

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