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