attorney, Elizabeth sued the estate over her status, claiming that she was an indentured servant who had served past her term and that her son was thus freeborn. This was eventually accepted by the Virginia General Court, though it overturned the decision after an appeal from the estate. Elizabeth took the case to the Virginia General Assembly, which accepted her arguments. According to scholar Taunya Lovell Banks, children born to English parents outside the country became English subjects at birth, others could become "naturalized subjects" (although there was no process at the time in the colonies). What was unsettled was the status of children if only one of the parents was an English subject, as foreigners (including Africans) were not considered subjects. Because non-whites came to be denied civil rights as foreigners, mixed-race people seeking freedom often had to stress their English ancestry (and later, European). As a direct result of freedom suits such as those filed by Elizabeth, the Virginian House of Burgesses passed the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, noting that "doubts have arisen whether children got by an Englishmen upon a negro woman should be slave or free". After the American Revolution, slave law in the United States continued to maintain such distinctions. Virginia established a law that no one could be enslaved in the state other than those who had that status on October 17, 1785, "and the descendants of the females of them." Kentucky adopted this law in 1798; Mississippi passed a similar law in 1822, using the phrase about females and their descendants, as did Florida in 1828. Louisiana, whose legal system was based on civil law (following its French colonial past), in 1825 added this language to its code: "Children born of a mother then in a state of slavery, whether married or not, follow the condition of their mother." Other states adopted this "norm" through judicial rulings. In summary, the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem functioned economically to provide a steady supply of slaves. Mixed-race slaves By the 18th century, the colonial slave population included mixed-race children of white ancestry, classified as mulattoes (half Black), quadroons (one-quarter Black), and octoroons (one-eighth Black). They were fathered by white planters, overseers, and other men with power, with enslaved women and girls who were also sometimes of mixed race. Numerous mulatto slave people lived in stable families at the Monticello plantation of Thomas