The Legal Understanding of Slavery

The Legal Understanding of Slavery PDF Author: Jean Allain
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191645354
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
"Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." So reads the legal definition of slavery agreed by the League of Nations in 1926. Further enshrined in law during international negotiations in 1956 and 1998, this definition has been interpreted in different ways by the international courts in the intervening years. What can be considered slavery? Should forced labour be considered slavery? Debt-bondage? Child soldiering? Or forced marriage? This book explores the limits of how slavery is understood in law. It shows how the definition of slavery in law and the contemporary understanding of slavery has continually evolved and continues to be contentious. It traces the evolution of concepts of slavery, from Roman law through the Middle Ages, the 18th and 19th centuries, up to the modern day manifestations, including manifestations of forced labour and trafficking in persons, and considers how the 1926 definition can distinguish slavery from lesser servitudes. Together the contributors have put together a set of guidelines intended to clarify the law where slavery is concerned. The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery, reproduced here for the first time, takes their shared understanding of both the past and present to project a consistent interpretation of the legal definition of slavery for the future.

The Legal Understanding of Slavery

The Legal Understanding of Slavery PDF Author: Jean Allain
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191645354
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." So reads the legal definition of slavery agreed by the League of Nations in 1926. Further enshrined in law during international negotiations in 1956 and 1998, this definition has been interpreted in different ways by the international courts in the intervening years. What can be considered slavery? Should forced labour be considered slavery? Debt-bondage? Child soldiering? Or forced marriage? This book explores the limits of how slavery is understood in law. It shows how the definition of slavery in law and the contemporary understanding of slavery has continually evolved and continues to be contentious. It traces the evolution of concepts of slavery, from Roman law through the Middle Ages, the 18th and 19th centuries, up to the modern day manifestations, including manifestations of forced labour and trafficking in persons, and considers how the 1926 definition can distinguish slavery from lesser servitudes. Together the contributors have put together a set of guidelines intended to clarify the law where slavery is concerned. The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery, reproduced here for the first time, takes their shared understanding of both the past and present to project a consistent interpretation of the legal definition of slavery for the future.

Fugitive Slaves and American Courts

Fugitive Slaves and American Courts PDF Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
ISBN: 1584777400
Category : Fugitive slaves
Languages : en
Pages : 2428

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Book Description
Reprinted from the series Slavery, Race and the American Legal System, 1700-1872, this set contains facsimiles of 56 rare pamphlets relating to court cases involving fugitive slaves. As in the companion set, Southern Slaves in Free State Courts, some pamphlets were part of the public debate over judicial decisions. Others used cases to promote the antislavery cause or, in some instances, support or justify slavery. "These...volumes 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.

Runaway Slaves

Runaway Slaves PDF Author: John Hope Franklin
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 9780195084511
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
This bold and precedent-setting study details numerous slave rebellions against white masters, drawn from planters' records, government petitions, newspapers, and other documents. The reactions of white slave owners are also documented. 15 halftones.

The Captive's Quest for Freedom

The Captive's Quest for Freedom PDF Author: R. J. M. Blackett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108418716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
Examines the impact fugitive slaves had on the Fugitive Slave Law and the coming of the American Civil War.

The War Before the War

The War Before the War PDF Author: Andrew Delbanco
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224137
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book Selection Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Lionel Trilling Book Award A New York Times Critics' Best Book "Excellent... stunning."—Ta-Nehisi Coates This book tells the story of America’s original sin—slavery—through politics, law, literature, and above all, through the eyes of enslavedblack people who risked their lives to flee from bondage, thereby forcing the nation to confront the truth about itself. The struggle over slavery divided not only the American nation but also the hearts and minds of individual citizens faced with the timeless problem of when to submit to unjust laws and when to resist. The War Before the War illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.

The Fugitive Slave Law and It's Victims (Illustrated)

The Fugitive Slave Law and It's Victims (Illustrated) PDF Author: American Anti-Slavery Society
Publisher: BookRix
ISBN: 3730989669
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted by Congress in September, 1850, received the signature of HOWELL COBB, [of Georgia,] as Speaker of the House of Representatives, of WILLIAM R. KING, [of Alabama,] as President of the Senate, and was "approved," September 18th, of that year, by MILLARD FILLMORE, Acting President of the United States. The authorship of the Bill is generally ascribed to James M. Mason, Senator from Virginia. Before proceeding to the principal object of this tract, it is proper to give a synopsis of the Act itself, which was well called, by the New York Evening Post, "An Act for the Encouragement of Kidnapping." It is in ten sections.

Fugitive Slave on Trial

Fugitive Slave on Trial PDF Author: Earl M. Maltz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Chronicles the case of a runaway slave who was tracked to Boston by his owner. Compellingly details the struggle over his fate and how that became a focal point for national controversy. Reveals how the case became one of the most dramatic and widely publicized events in the long-running conflict over the issue of fugitive slaves.

Supreme Injustice

Supreme Injustice PDF Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674982088
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The three most important Supreme Court Justices before the Civil War—Chief Justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney and Associate Justice Joseph Story—upheld the institution of slavery in ruling after ruling. These opinions cast a shadow over the Court and the legacies of these men, but historians have rarely delved deeply into the personal and political ideas and motivations they held. In Supreme Injustice, the distinguished legal historian Paul Finkelman establishes an authoritative account of each justice’s proslavery position, the reasoning behind his opposition to black freedom, and the incentives created by circumstances in his private life. Finkelman uses census data and other sources to reveal that Justice Marshall aggressively bought and sold slaves throughout his lifetime—a fact that biographers have ignored. Justice Story never owned slaves and condemned slavery while riding circuit, and yet on the high court he remained silent on slave trade cases and ruled against blacks who sued for freedom. Although Justice Taney freed many of his own slaves, he zealously and consistently opposed black freedom, arguing in Dred Scott that free blacks had no Constitutional rights and that slave owners could move slaves into the Western territories. Finkelman situates this infamous holding within a solid record of support for slavery and hostility to free blacks. Supreme Injustice boldly documents the entanglements that alienated three major justices from America’s founding ideals and embedded racism ever deeper in American civic life.

South to Freedom

South to Freedom PDF Author: Alice L Baumgartner
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541617770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
A brilliant and surprising account of the coming of the American Civil War, showing the crucial role of slaves who escaped to Mexico. The Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American slaves before the Civil War. But thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico, where slavery was abolished in 1837. In South to Freedom, historianAlice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery's future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War.

Fugitivism

Fugitivism PDF Author: S. Charles Bolton
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 161075669X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Winner, 2020 Booker Worthen Literary Prize During the antebellum years, over 750,000 enslaved people were taken to the Lower Mississippi Valley, where two-thirds of them were sold in the slave markets of New Orleans, Natchez, and Memphis. Those who ended up in Louisiana found themselves in an environment of swamplands, sugar plantations, French-speaking creoles, and the exotic metropolis of New Orleans. Those sold to planters in the newly-opened Mississippi Delta cleared land and cultivated cotton for owners who had moved west to get rich as quickly as possible, driving this labor force to harsh extremes. Like enslaved people all over the South, those in the Lower Mississippi Valley left home at night for clandestine parties or religious meetings, sometimes “laying out” nearby for a few days or weeks. Some of them fled to New Orleans and other southern cities where they could find refuge in the subculture of slaves and free blacks living there, and a few attempted to live permanently free in the swamps and forests of the surrounding area. Fugitives also tried to returnto eastern slave states to rejoin families from whom they had been separated. Some sought freedom on the northern side of the Ohio River; othersfled to Mexico for the same purpose. Fugitivism provides a wealth of new information taken from advertisements, newspaper accounts, and court records. It explains how escapees made use of steamboat transportation, how urban runaways differed from their rural counterparts, how enslaved people were victimized by slave stealers, how conflicts between black fugitives and the white people who tried to capture them encouraged a culture of violence in the South, and how runaway slaves from the Lower Mississippi Valley influenced the abolitionist movement in the North. Readers will discover that along with an end to oppression, freedom-seeking slaves wanted the same opportunities afforded to most Americans.