Free Blacks, Slaves, and Slaveowners in Civil and Criminal Courts

Free Blacks, Slaves, and Slaveowners in Civil and Criminal Courts
Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
Total Pages: 642
Release: 2012-11
Genre: Freed persons
ISBN: 1584777427
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Free Blacks, Slaves, and Slaveowners in Civil and Criminal Courts: The Pamphlet Literature. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988. 2 Vols. 642 pp. With a New Introduction by Paul Finkelman. Reprinted 2007, 2013 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 9781584777427; ISBN-10: 1584777427. Hardcover. New. 14 Pamphlets reprinted in fascimile, in 2 volumes, with a New Introduction by Paul Finkelman: 1. Goodell, Abner Cheney Jr. The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman, Who Murdered Their Master at Charleston, Mass., in 1755; for which the Man was Hanged and Gibbeted, and the Woman was Burned to Death, Including, also, Some Account of Other Punishments by Burning in Massachusetts. Cambridge, 1883. Cambridge, 1883. 39 pp. 2. Johnstone, Abraham. The address of Abraham Jolinstone, a black man, who was hanged at Woodbury in the county of Glocester, and state of New Jersey on Saturday 8th day of July last: to which is added his dying confession. Philadelphia, 1797. 47 pp. 3. The Life and Confession of Cato, a Slave of Elijah Mount, of Charleston, in the county of Montgomery, Who was Executed at Johnstown on the 22nd day of April 1803 for the murder of Mary Akins. Johnstown, 1803. 12 pp. 4. A Faithful Report of the Trial of Doctor William Little, on an Indictment for an Assault and Battery, Committed upon the Body of His Lawful Wife, Mrs. Jane Little, a Black Lady. New York, 1808. 24 pp. 5. The Commissioners of the Alms-House vs. Alexander Whistelo, a Black Man; Being a Remarkable Case of Bastardy, Tried and Adjudged by the Mayor, Recorder, and Several Aldermen of the City of New York. New York, 1808. 56 pp. Please contact us for a complete list of titles contained in these two volumes. Reprinted from the Garland series Slavery, Race, and the American Legal System, 1700-1872. Facsimiles of 20 scarce pamphlets are collected in these two volumes. As the title indicates, most are reports of criminal cases relating to such crimes as murder and assault. Others address political issues arising from legal rights of free blacks. Also included are accounts of two fascinating cases relating to problems caused by the end of slavery. One involves the legal status of informal marriages between former slaves, the other involves the validity of slave contracts signed before abolition. " The volumes in this series] belong in every library used for research, and in particular at all law school libraries. They will prove valuable to historians, lawyers, law teachers and students, and all persons interested in the problems of slavery and race in American experience." William M. Wiecek, American Journal of Legal History 33 (1989) 187.

Criminal Injustice

Criminal Injustice
Author: Glenn McNair
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2009-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813929830
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Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia’s Criminal Justice System is the most comprehensive study of the criminal justice system of a slave state to date. McNair traces the evolution of Georgia’s legal culture by examining its use of slave codes and slave patrols, as well as presenting data on crimes prosecuted, trial procedures and practices, conviction rates, the appellate process, and punishment. Based on more than four hundred capital cases, McNair’s study deploys both narrative and quantitative analysis to get at both the theory and the reality of the criminal procedure for slaves in the century leading up to the Civil War. He shows how whites moved from the utopian innocence of the colony’s original Trustees, who envisioned a society free of slavery and the depravity it inculcated in masters, to one where slaveholders became the enforcers of laws and informal rules, the severity of which was limited only by the increasing economic value of their slaves as property. The slaves themselves, regarded under the law both as moveable property and--for the purposes of punishment--as moral agents, had, inevitably, a radically different view of Georgia’s slave criminal justice system. Although the rules and procedures were largely the same for both races, the state charged and convicted blacks more frequently and punished them more severely than whites for the same crimes. Courts were also more punitive in their judgment and punishment of black defendants when their victims were white, a pattern of disparate treatment based on race that persists to this day. Informal systems of control in urban households and on rural plantations and farms complemented the formal system and enhanced the power of slaveowners. Criminal Injustice shows how the prerogatives of slavery and white racial domination trumped any hope for legal justice for blacks.

Roadblocks to Freedom

Roadblocks to Freedom
Author: Andrew Fede
Publisher: Quid Pro Books
Total Pages: 616
Release: 2012-01-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610271092
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This new book by Andrew Fede considers the law of freedom suits and manumission from the point-of-view of legal procedure, evidence rules, damage awards, and trial practicein addition to the abstract principles stated in the appellate decisions. The author shows that procedural and evidentiary roadblocks made it increasingly impossible for many slaves, or free blacks who were wrongfully held as slaves, to litigate their freedom. Even some of the most celebrated cases in which the courts freed slaves must be read as tempered by the legal realities the actors faced or the courts actually recognized in the process. Slave owners in almost all slave societies had the right to manumit or free all or some of their slaves. Slavery law also permitted people to win their freedom if they were held as slaves contrary to law. In this book, Fede provides a comprehensive view of how some enslaved litigants won their freedom in the courtand how many others, like Dred and Harriet Scott, did not because of the substantive and procedural barriers that both judges and legislators placed in the way of people held in slavery who sought their freedom in court. From the 17th century to the Civil War, Southern governments built roadblock after roadblock to the freedom sought by deserving enslaved people, even if this restricted the masters' rights to free their slaves or defied settled law. They increasingly prohibited all manumissions and added layers of procedure to those seeking freedomwhile eventually providing a streamlined process by which free blacks "voluntarily" enslaved themselves and their children. Drawing on his three decades of legal experience to take seriously the trial process and rules under which slave freedom cases were decided, Fede considers how slave owners, slaves, and lawyers caused legal change from the bottom up.

What Sayeth the Law

What Sayeth the Law
Author: Arthur F. Howington
Publisher: Dissertations-G
Total Pages: 378
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN:
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Double Character

Double Character
Author: Ariela J. Gross
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2000-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691059578
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Double Character seeks to explain how communities dealt with an important dilemma raised by these trials: how could slaves who acted as moral agents be treated as commodities? Because these cases made the character of slaves a central legal question, slaves' moral agency intruded into the courtroom, often challenging the character of slaveholders who saw themselves as honorable masters. Gross looks at the stories about white and black character that witnesses and litigants put forth in court.

Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860

Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860
Author: Thomas D. Morris
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 588
Release: 2004-01-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0807864307
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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.

The American Law of Slavery, 1810-1860

The American Law of Slavery, 1810-1860
Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691198152
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In an examination of Southern slave law between 1810 and 1860, Mark Tushnet reveals a structured dichotomy between slave labor systems and bourgeois systems of production. Whereas the former rest on the total dominion of the master over the slave and necessitate a concern for the slave's humanity, the latter rest of the purchase by the capitalist of a worker's labor power only and are concerned primarily with economic interest. Focusing on a wide range of issues that include contract and accident law as well as criminal law and the law of manumission, he shows how Southern slave law had to respond to the competing pressures of humanity and interest. Beginning with a critical evaluation of slave law, the author develops the conceptual framework for his own perspective on the legal system, drawing on the works of Marx and Weber. He then examines four appellate court cases decided in three different states, from civil-law Louisiana to commonlaw North Carolina, at widely separated times, from 1818 to 1858. Professor Tushnet finds that the cases display a continuing but never wholly successful attempt at distinguish between law and sentiment as modes of regulating social interactions involving slaves. Also, the cases show that the primary method of accommodating law and sentiment was an attempt to use rigid categories to confine the law of slavery to what was thought its proper sphere. Mark Tushnet is Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Slavery & the Law

Slavery & the Law
Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780742521193
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In this book, prominent historians of slavery and legal scholars analyze the intricate relationship between slavery, race, and the law from the earliest Black Codes in colonial America to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law and the Dred Scott decision prior to the Civil War. Slavery & the Law's wide-ranging essays focus on comparative slave law, auctioneering practices, rules of evidence, and property rights, as well as issues of criminality, punishment, and constitutional law.