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Slavery And Freedom In Theory And Practice, David Watkins

Political Science Faculty Publications

Slavery has long stood as a mirror image to the conception of a free person in republican theory. This essay contends that slavery deserves this central status in a theory of freedom, but a more thorough examination of slavery in theory and in practice will reveal additional insights about freedom previously unacknowledged by republicans. Slavery combines imperium (state domination) and dominium (private domination) in a way that both destroys freedom today and diminishes opportunities to achieve freedom tomorrow. Dominium and imperium working together are a greater affront to freedom than either working alone. However, an examination of slavery in practice, …

Reparation, Restoration, Incarceration: Comparative Perspectives On The African-American Reparations Problem, Michael A. Livingston

University of Baltimore Journal of International Law

The proposal of reparations to African-Americans for slavery and subsequent offenses has stimulated a great deal of academic attention but little practical action. One reason for this is the indifference of non-black Americans and the lack of historical consciousness in a pragmatic, forward-looking culture. Yet some AfricanAmericans also have mixed feelings about reparations, preferring to concentrate on current problems rather than seek repayment for past wrongs, and perhaps even considering the debate as a divergence from more pressing, immediate problems.

Archaeological And Historical Investigations Of The Robert Newsom Farmstead (23cy497), Callaway County, Missouri, James Adam Halpern

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Scholarly research on slavery in the U.S. has focused on large commercial plantations in the Old South. Yet a majority of slaveholders and nearly half of the enslaved lived in smaller slaveholding houses and family farms (Burke 2010:4). This study helps redress the dearth of research on small slaveholdings through study of the Robert Newsom Farmstead, or "Celia" Site (23CY497), located in Callaway County, Missouri. The research goal is to model the antebellum spatial organization of the landholding, thereby increasing our understanding of slavery at the Newsom site and on non-plantation slaveholdings generally. This was accomplished through collection and analysis …

Sex, Power, And Slavery, Gwyn Campbell, Elizabeth Elbourne

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Sexual exploitation was and is a critical feature of enslavement. Across many different societies, slaves were considered to own neither their bodies nor their children, even if many struggled to resist. At the same time, paradoxes abound: for example, in some societies to bear the children of a master was a potential route to manumission for some women. Sex, Power, and Slavery is the first history of slavery and bondage to take sexuality seriously.

Twenty-six authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds look at the vexed, traumatic intersections of the histories of slavery and of sexuality. They argue that such intersections mattered …

"To Preserve, Protect, And Pass On:" Shirley Plantation As A Historic House Museum, 1894–2013, Kerry Dahm

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an analysis of Shirley Plantation’s operation as a historic house museum from 1894 to the present period, and the Carter family’s dedication to keeping the estate within the family. The first chapter examines Shirley Plantation’s beginnings as a historic house museum as operated by two Carter women, Alice Carter Bransford and Marion Carter Oliver, who inherited the property in the late nineteenth century. The second chapter explores Shirley Plantation’s development as a popular historic site during the mid-twentieth century to the early part of the twenty-first century, and compares the site’s development to the interpretative changes that …

Contested Nation: Freedman And The Cherokee Nation, Dave Watt

Undergraduate Research - History

The Freedmen are, most simply, those individuals that have been freed from bondage. In the United States this term is often used in reference to legally emancipated slaves and consequently, their descendants. The term “Cherokee Freedmen” refers to those freed slaves who joined with the Cherokee Nation, or, men and women who were formerly held in servitude within the Cherokee Nation. This term has also been given to the descendants of marriages involving freed Africans and Cherokee spouses, thus making the network of people labeled Freedmen an expansive group of people. Totaling roughly 3000 people in the present day, Cherokee …

Slaves In The Family: Testamentary Freedom And Interracial Deviance, Kevin Noble Maillard

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses the deviance of interracial sexuality acknowledged in testamentary documents. The language of wills calls into question the authority of probate and family law by forcing issues of deviance into the public realm. Will dramas, settled in or out of court, publicly unearth insecurities about family. Many objections to the stated intent of the testator generate from social prejudices toward certain kinds of interpersonal relationships: nonmarital, homosexual, and/or interracial. When pitted against an issue of a moral or social transgression, testamentary intent often fails. In order for these attacks on testamentary validity to succeed, they must be situated …

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

Vox Populi-Vox Belli: A Historical Study Of Southern Ante Bellum Public Attitudes And Motivations Toward Secession, Julian Boyden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines why the south seceded in 1860 as opposed to any other time in the 19th century and what changed the mentalité of the people in the period 1857-1860. The underlying issue in southern politics and the issue of secession was clearly slavery and slavery rested on the economics of cotton. Yet slavery and cotton do not explain why the South seceded in 1860 and not at other times in the preceding seventy years. 1807 saw the outlawing of the international slave trade and 1819 saw Congress pass the Slave Trade Act interdicting the ships involved. In 1828 …

Shades Of Grey: Slaveholding Free Women Of Color In Antebellum New Orleans, 1800-1840, Anne Ulentin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the economic opportunities that free women of color could derive from slaveholding, their motivations, and their impact on New Orleans’ antebellum society and economy. Another aim is to find out the role and impact of free women of color from Saint Domingue (later Haiti), whose arrival in New Orleans doubled the number of free women of color in the city. Finally, the analysis of relationships between free women of color and their slaves and with the diverse population of New Orleans plays an important part in this study. Notarial deeds (sales and purchases of slaves, mortgages of …

Freedom In Education: The Movement To Educate The Freedmen In The Pee Dee Region During Reconstruction, Aliyyah Willis

Honors Theses

The current scholarship on the education of the freed slaves in the South during Reconstruction is not so much one of differing points of view, but of specialization within the broader topic. Most of this scholarship focuses on the Southern region as a whole, rather than limiting the scope to just one state or smaller geographic area. Instead of arguing for or against a particular point of view, today's historians are focusing on one part of the larger topic to analyze. Whether studying the people themselves and their motivations, the teachers who educated them, or the system of education that …

Border State, Divided Loyalties: The Politics Of Ellen Wallace, Kentucky Slave Owner, During The Civil War, Amber C. Nicholson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the diary of Ellen Wallace, a woman who lived in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, during the American Civil War. A diligent diarist, Ellen recorded not only the workings of her farm and household, but also her interactions with slaves, her worries about secession, and her shifting views on President Lincoln, emancipation and the war itself. At the start of the war, Ellen was a staunch Unionist. By war's end, she was a Confederate. This thesis will examine the factors that contributed to Ellen's changing political ideals and how she sought to reconcile her opposing beliefs. Ellen occupied a role …

Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines a hitherto neglected body of works featuring female characters enslaved in Islamicate lands. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Englishmen and women were taken captive by pirates and enslaved in what is now the Middle East and North Africa. Several writers of the time created narratives and dramas about the experiences of such captives. Recent scholarship has brought to light many of these works and pointed out their importance in establishing what was still a young, unsure, and developing English identity in this early period. Most of this scholarship, however, has dealt with narratives of the …

"...The Way Things Were Back Then": Why Making Excuses For Slavery Doesn't Work, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

Presentism. Aside from historical revisionism, it is perhaps the 'epithet' with which the modern historian find themselves branded the most. I've been reading again a series of screeds by Bill Vallante, a Confederate reenactor and SCV member from Commack, NY (thanks to John Hennessy). I've read these pages before, but this time around was struck by the abject vitriol which oozes from the language employed. A line in one piece in particular stood out to me as quite angry:

"Add a heavy dose of presentism (judging or interpreting the past according to the standards of the present), mix thoroughly and …

Slavery In The White Psyche : How Contemporary White Americans Remember And Making Meaning Of Slavery : A Project Based Upon Independent Investigation, Ryan Nelson Parker

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This qualitative study explored how contemporary white Americans remember and make meaning of U.S. slavery and assessed if there is psychological conflict in relationship to slavery. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants who identify as "white" and were born and raised in the United States. Participants were asked to reflect on their memories of learning about, talking about, and knowing about the history of slavery; to share their internal representations of slavery and how they imagine their familial, personal, and imagined relationship with slavery; to report their beliefs about the impact of slavery on themselves personally and on contemporary …

A Growing Concern: Modern Slavery And Agricultural Production In Brazil And South Asia, Justin Campbell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The modern use of slave labor in the production of agriculture takes many forms. In Brazil, the ability of powerful landowners to repress poor workers is an important element of large-scale agricultural production. In South Asia, cultural norms and traditions are used to exploit the most vulnerable communities. In both examples, inequity and poverty are implicit, and debt is a tool used to legitimize bondage.

African Religious Integration In Florida During The First Spanish Period, Christopher Beats

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of the unique conditions for African-descended slaves in St. Augustine, Florida, during the First Spanish Period. St. Augustine was an important garrison at a remote point in the Spanish Empire at the edge of a hostile frontier. As such, economics were less a priority than defense. Slaves, therefore, received different treatment here than in English colonies or even other Spanish colonies. Due to the threat of Protestantism, religious adherence was more important as a test of loyalty than ethnicity and slaves and freed-people were able to integrate better than in other Spanish holdings. In order …

African Architectural Transference To The South Carolina Low Country, 1700-1880, Fritz Hamer

Faculty and Staff Publications

There is growing historical and archaeological evidence that African style housing was an integral part of slave communities on plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Besides the "shotgun" house, other African house forms were built in North America before descendants of African slaves became acculturated to western construction techniques. The rarity of historical and archaeological evidence of these structures can be attributed to the culture bias of early white observers and the poor preservation of these impermanent structures in the archaeological record.

Estranged Fruit: The Reconstruction Amendments, Moral Slavery, And The Rearticulation Of Lesbian And Gay Identity, E. Nathaniel Gates

Cardozo Law Review

David A.J. Richards has composed a thoughtful and suggestive narrative that centers on the excavation of the antislavery constitutionalism forged by a small, but arguably influential, group of antebellum abolitionist feminists. Central to his narrative, and to the constitutional theses of the abolitionist feminists, is the concept of "moral slavery" which, on Richards' account, constitutes a crucial element of the hermeneutic background essential to a proper interpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments. According to Professor Richards, an understanding of the figure of the abolitionist feminist as a "multiple exile and outcast" who in opposing "moral slavery" played a vital role in …

South Carolina's Largest Slave Auctioneering Firm, Thomas D. Russell

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This article presents the original finding that South Carolina's legal system conducted a majority of the state's slave auctions during the antebellum years.Courts conducted slave auctions in several circumstances. Sheriffs sold the property of debtors; and courts also conducted or supervised sales in order to divide estates. Drawing upon extensive empirical analysis of primary sources in various South Carolina archives, this article compares the total number of slaves sold at court-ordered or court-supervised sales with the best empirical estimates for private slave sales - whether at auction or not. The conclusion is that the courts acted as the state's greatest …

Slavery, Sharecropping, And Sexual Inequality, Susan A. Mann

Sociology Faculty Publications

Focuses on black women's experiences in the transition from slavery to sharecropping in the South after the Civil War. Although the public and private domains of work became more differentiated, and a sexual division of labor in the home became more marked, the position of freedwomen nevertheless improved.

A House Divided Against Itself: A Comment On “Mastery, Slavery, And Emancipation”, Kendall Thomas

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review Forum On H. E. Maude's Slavers In Paradise: The Peruvian Labour Trade In Polynesia,, H. E. Maude, Grant Mccall, Brij V. Lal, Harold E. Davis

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Lessons Of Lumpkin: A Review Of Recent Literature On Law, Comity, And The Impending Crisis, John Phillip Reid

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.