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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Slavery And The Postbellum University: The Case Of Smu, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Skyler Arbuckle
Slavery And The Postbellum University: The Case Of Smu, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Skyler Arbuckle
Publications
People who practiced slavery across the United States, or engaged in slavery-related practices, were often the same civically-minded social, legal, and economic leaders who founded the nation’s first colleges and universities. There was, thus, from our earliest times, an unacknowledged but firm tie between the values and high ideals of the academy that existed in stark contraposition to the horrors of human bondage that fueled those institutions. Many North American colleges founded before the Civil War relied on money derived from the elite members of society with direct involvements in slavery. While a growing body of scholarly work discusses early …
Do Abolitionism And Constitutionalism Mix?, Aya Gruber
Do Abolitionism And Constitutionalism Mix?, Aya Gruber
Publications
No abstract provided.
Cherokee Freedmen And The Color Of Belonging, Lolita Buckner Inniss
Cherokee Freedmen And The Color Of Belonging, Lolita Buckner Inniss
Publications
This article addresses the Cherokee tribe and their historic conflict with the descendants of their former black slaves, designated Cherokee Freedmen. This article specifically addresses how historic discussions of black, red and white skin colors, designating the African-ancestored, aboriginal (Native American) and European-ancestored people of the United States, have helped to shape the contours of color-based national belonging among the Cherokee. This article also suggests that Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of postcolonial mimicry offers a potent source for analyzing the Cherokee’s historic use of skin color as a marker of Cherokee membership. The Cherokee past practice of black slavery and …
Tricky Magic: Blacks As Immigrants And The Paradox Of Foreignness, Lolita K. Buckner Inniss
Tricky Magic: Blacks As Immigrants And The Paradox Of Foreignness, Lolita K. Buckner Inniss
Publications
Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the "outsider." Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American. Perhaps that is why one of the first epithets that many …
"The Sacred Rights Of The Weak": Pain, Sympathy, And The Culture Of Individual Rights In Antebellum America, Elizabeth B. Clark
"The Sacred Rights Of The Weak": Pain, Sympathy, And The Culture Of Individual Rights In Antebellum America, Elizabeth B. Clark
Publications
In 1835 an antislavery sympathizer leaving a lecture by Theodore Dwight Weld went home to dream that she was transported above the world; looking down at the United States, she saw "multitudes of sable figures, bending beneath a scorching sun -- their backs lacerated by the whip -- scourged, maimed, loaded with irons -- subject to every insult -- and exposed to every gust of unbridled passions." The dreamer, a Mrs. Sturges, drew from many discourses in describing her lengthy dream, but the fundamental trope of her visionary narrative was the story of the suffering slave, a trope that in …
Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery And Divorce In Nineteenth-Century America, Elizabeth B. Clark
Matrimonial Bonds: Slavery And Divorce In Nineteenth-Century America, Elizabeth B. Clark
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In the covenant of marriage, woman is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master -- the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. He has so framed the law of divorce . . . as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women -- the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Clark
Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Clark
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The emphasis on freedom or enslavement of the body, and the issues that sprang from that focus, were feminists' contribution to nineteenth-century American liberalism, as well as their link to radical thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew arguments from the realm of political liberty and religious tolerance to make the case for choice in private life. But the vision of individual autonomy in sexual and domestic matters served also as the basis for her definition of citizenship and as a paradigm for relations among citizens and between citizens and the state. Self-ownership was the unifying theme that ran through Stanton's political …
The Thirteenth And Fourteenth Amendments: Constitutional Authority For Federal Legislation Against Private Sex Discrimination, Emily Calhoun
The Thirteenth And Fourteenth Amendments: Constitutional Authority For Federal Legislation Against Private Sex Discrimination, Emily Calhoun
Publications
No abstract provided.