Charleston County Public Library

Southern slavery and the law, 1619-1860, Thomas D. Morris

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 525-561) and index

index present

non fiction

Southern slavery and the law, 1619-1860

bibliography

32133202

Thomas D. Morris

Studies in legal history

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. Therefore, laws governing slaves and slavery had to be incorporated into the body of English common law that formed the basis of legal culture throughout the colonial SouthSpecifically, Morris 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 localInterpretation, 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. Using a wide range of published and unpublished legal records from fifty countries and parishes, Morris offers a detailed and systematic analysis ofCases as a means of establishing both what the doctrines concerning slavery were and how they were implemented

Sources : racial and legal: The function of race in Southern slave law ; The sources of Southern slave law -- Slaves as property: Slaves as property : chattels personal or realty, and did It matter? ; Slavery and the law of successions ; Contract law in the sale and mortgaging of slaves ; The slave hireling contract and the law -- Slaves as persons: Southern law and the homicides of slaves ; Law and the abuse of slaves ; Jurisdiction and process in the trials of slaves ; Slaves and the rules of evidence in criminal trials ; Masters and the criminal offenses of their slaves ; Obedience and the outsider ; Slaves' violence against third parties ; Slaves, sexual violence, and the law ; Property crimes and the law ; Police regulations ; Wrongs of slaves and the civil liability of masters -- Manumission: Emancipation : conceptions, restraints, and practice ; Quasi and in futuro emancipations