This volume is the first comprehensive history of the evolving relationship between American slavery and the law from colonial times to the Civil War. As Thomas Morris clearly shows, racial slavery came to the English colonies as an institution without strict legal definitions or guidelines. Specifically, he demonstrates that there was no coherent body of law that dealt solely with slaves. Instead, more general legal rules concerning inheritance, mortgages, and transfers of property coexisted with laws pertaining only to slaves. According to Morris, southern lawmakers and judges struggled to reconcile a social order based on slavery with existing English common law (or, in Louisiana, with continental civil law.) Because much was left to local interpretation, laws varied between and even within states. In addition, legal doctrine often differed from local practice. And, as Morris reveals, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, tensions mounted between the legal culture of racial slavery and the competing demands of capitalism and evangelical Christianity.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
This fine book is now the standard work concerning the legal history of slavery in the United States.
Journal of Southern History
The fullest and most probing explication to date of the policies and practices of the 'laws' of slavery.
Historian
Brimming with knowledge and insight about a horrific aspect of our legal culture that continues to affect us.
Washington Post Book World
One of the most impressive and thoughtful volumes on slavery in the last twenty years.
History: Reviews of New Books
One of the most significant works on Southern slave law.
Law and Politics Book Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
A comprehensive history of the evolving relationship between American slavery and the law from colonial times to the Civil War.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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First Sentence:
"These two words, Negro and Slave," the Reverend Morgan Godwyn wrote in 1680, had "by custom grown Homogeneous and convertible; even as Negro and Christian, Englishman and Heathen, are by the like corrupt Custom and Partiality made Opposites." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
prospective manumissions, bailment law, circuit court minutes, equitable paternalism, liberal property law, slavery jurisprudence, legal provocation, sequitur ventrem, qualified slavery, executory devises, undue correction, vindictive damages, pregnant circumstances, lower court records, battery with intent, slave trials, prohibited manumission, fellow servant rule, enslavement laws, petit treason, insolent slave, session laws, contractual analysis, liberal capitalist world, pure slavery Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South Carolina, North Carolina, Civil War, Judge Ruffin, South Carolinians, Anderson District, Landon Carter, Judge William, Fairfield District, York County, Lowndes County, New York, Charles City County, Judge O'Neall, Spartanburg District, New Orleans, Adams County, Prince Georges County, Robert Carter, United States, Westmoreland County, Frances Wilson, George Tucker, Lancaster County, Lunenburg County New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
"These two words, Negro and Slave," the Reverend Morgan Godwyn wrote in 1680, had "by custom grown Homogeneous and convertible; even as Negro and Christian, Englishman and Heathen, are by the like corrupt Custom and Partiality made Opposites." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
prospective manumissions, bailment law, circuit court minutes, equitable paternalism, liberal property law, slavery jurisprudence, legal provocation, sequitur ventrem, qualified slavery, executory devises, undue correction, vindictive damages, pregnant circumstances, lower court records, battery with intent, slave trials, prohibited manumission, fellow servant rule, enslavement laws, petit treason, insolent slave, session laws, contractual analysis, liberal capitalist world, pure slavery Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South Carolina, North Carolina, Civil War, Judge Ruffin, South Carolinians, Anderson District, Landon Carter, Judge William, Fairfield District, York County, Lowndes County, New York, Charles City County, Judge O'Neall, Spartanburg District, New Orleans, Adams County, Prince Georges County, Robert Carter, United States, Westmoreland County, Frances Wilson, George Tucker, Lancaster County, Lunenburg County New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 290
books:
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31
books
cite this book:
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- American Slavery-American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia by Edmund S. Morgan on 8 pages
- A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown: Or, a System of the Principal... (American Law Series : the Formative Years) by William George Hawkins on 8 pages
- The Law of Contract (Fundamental Principles of Law) by J.C. Smith on 5 pages
- The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Oxford Paperbacks) by David Brion Davis on 5 pages
- Free Men All by Professor Thomas Morris on 5 pages
See all 290 books this book cites
- Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation by John Hope Franklin in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Oxford Companion to American Law (Oxford Companions) by Kermit L. Hall on page 692, and page 747
- Double Character: Slavery and Master in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom by Ariela J. Gross in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge Studies in International Relations) by Neta C. Crawford on page 172, and Back Matter
- The Many Legalities of Early America (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia) by Christopher L. Tomlins on page 79, and page 222
See all 31 books citing this book
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