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Full-Text Articles in Law
Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption Of Slave Families At Court Sales, Thomas D. Russell
Articles Sell Best Singly: The Disruption Of Slave Families At Court Sales, Thomas D. Russell
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
This legal history article presents the empirical finding that the risk of family separation at slave auctions was higher at court-ordered and court-supervised sales as compared with private sales of capitalist auctioneers. The article also examines legal and ideological justification for the destruction of slave families. Law served to disguise human agency in the breakup of slave families.
This article builds upon the author’s earlier finding that a majority of slave auctions in South Carolina were conducted by the courts. The data for this article and the previous study were drawn from antebellum primary sources including trial-court records, the salesbooks …
A New Image Of The Slave Auction: An Empirical Look At The Role Of Law In Slave Sales And A Conceptual Reevaluation Of Slave Property, Thomas D. Russell
A New Image Of The Slave Auction: An Empirical Look At The Role Of Law In Slave Sales And A Conceptual Reevaluation Of Slave Property, Thomas D. Russell
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
This legal history article presents a new understanding of the nature of slave property. Slave property was divided and fragmented into many different interests including those with application to real property such life estates, remainders, shifting and spring interests, and leasehold interests. With regard to these interests, the article overlays the first-year, law-school property course onto slaves as property. Property interests in slaves were also divided by credit mechanisms including mortgages and secured credit transactions. Warranties are another example of divided property interests in slaves.
The fragmented, Hohfeldian nature of slave property distributed the stake that southerners had in the …