Front cover image for Southern slavery and the law, 1619-1860

Southern slavery and the law, 1619-1860

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 South
Print Book, English, ©1996
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, ©1996
History
x, 575 pages ; 25 cm.
9780807822388, 9780807848173, 0807822388, 0807848174
32133202
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