Sally Miller
Sally Miller, born Salomé Müller (b. c. 1814 - ), was an American slave whose freedom suit in Louisiana was based on her claimed status as a free German immigrant and indentured servant. The case attracted wide attention and publicity because of the issue of "white" slavery. In Sally Miller v. Louis Belmonti (1845 La), the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in her favor, and Miller gained freedom.
Despite the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrum incorporated into state law, by which children followed the legal status of their mother at the time of birth, Miller was not successful in her attempt to gain freedom from slavery for her three surviving children. In a case settled in her favor by the judge, she won a case in which her former master John Fitz Miller tried to clear his name by proving that she was part-black and had been born into slavery in Miller v. Miller (1849 La). His appeal to the State Supreme Court was dismissed. Her identity remains controversial.
Background
Beginning in 1816, many impoverished Europeans immigrated to the United States as refugees from the crop failures of the Year Without a Summer, the wars of Napoleon, and other economic and social problems. Among the flood of refugees to Louisiana in 1818 were several families from Langensoultzbach in Alsace, on the lower Rhine, including Daniel Müller, a shoemaker; his wife Dorothea, two sons, and their daughters Dorothea and Salomé. To fund their passage, Müller signed a "redemption" or indenture agreement, bartering the labor of him and his family for several years. His wife and infant son died on the voyage. (Although this part of Alsace was then within French territory, and has been again since World War II, it was near the German border and had many ethnic German residents such as the Müllers, who spoke a German dialect.)
