Academic literature on the topic 'Legal status of slaves in free states'
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Journal articles on the topic "Legal status of slaves in free states"
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EL HAMEL, CHOUKI. "THE REGISTER OF THE SLAVES OF SULTAN MAWLAY ISMA‘IL OF MOROCCO AT THE TURN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY." Journal of African History 51, no. 1 (March 2010): 89–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021853710000186.
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ABSTRACTIn late-seventeenth-century Morocco, Mawlay Isma‘il commanded his officials to enslave all blacks: that is, to buy coercively or freely those already slaves and to enslave those who were free, including the Haratin (meaning free blacks or freed ex-slaves). This command violated the most salient Islamic legal code regarding the institution of slavery, which states that it is illegal to enslave fellow Muslims. This controversy caused a heated debate and overt hostility between the ‘ulama’ (Muslim scholars) and Mawlay Isma‘il. Official slave registers were created to justify the legality of the enforced buying of slaves from their owners and the enslavement of the Haratin. An equation of blackness and slavery was being developed to justify the subjection of the free Muslim black Moroccans. To prove the slave status of the black Moroccans, the officials in charge of the slavery project established a fictional hierarchy of categories of slaves. This project therefore constructed a slave status for all black people, even those who were free.
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Rustemov, Oleg D. "The rights of slaves in the Crimean Khanate and the conditions for their emancipation." Golden Horde Review 10, no. 3 (September 29, 2022): 715–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.22378/2313-6197.2022-10-3.715-727.
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Research objectives: The aim of this research is to study issues related to the legal status of slaves, as well as the terms and conditions of their release in the Crimean Khanate. Research materials: Individual research works on the topic of slavery in Ottoman Turkey and the texts of the Crimean Kadiasker books (sijils) in which slaves appear in connection with various legal proceedings related to them. Results and novelty of the research: Novelty lies in the fact that certain terms from the history of slavery in the Turkic Muslim states have been introduced into scientific circulation. For the first time in Russian historiography, the so-called guarantees (tedbir) of the liberation of slaves in the Crimean Khanate are described. The practice of announcing such “guarantees” to slaves finds its confirmation in court documents of the 17th century. The question of the existence of a limiting service life of slaves in the Crimean Khanate is considered. Also, for the first time, using historical evidence, the legal status of slaves has been studied, the relationship between slaves and masters has been examined, and other reasons for the release of slaves, not related to the end of their service, have been identified. As a result of this study, it is established that in the Crimea of the 16th-18th centuries, according to Muslim law, only prisoners of war captured in a war or on a campaign could become slaves. According to Sharia, Muslims could not be enslaved. This rule was strictly adhered to in the Crimea. We find confirmation of this fact in individual Crimean sijils where the fate of the Lipka Tatars who, being Muslims, were captured, brought to Crimea, and subsequently released. Such documents are examined here. The study has found that slaves were deprived of legal rights and had the status of mütekavvım mal – property permitted for use. They were part of the common property that could be sold, exchanged, donated, or used at the discretion of the owner. In yafts or lists of inherited property, slaves were listed, as a rule, among animals or other things. Sometimes slaves, at the request of their masters, received additional powers and became semi-free traders. A special category of slaves that stood out among others should be noted among the soldiers of the khan’s guard – kapy-kulu (literally – slave of the door/slave at the gate). This article determines that the normal life of a slave corresponded to a full six years. In addition to release on the grounds of seniority, other conditions for the release of a slave were also possible. Four types of tedbir and the conditions of kitabet, or an agreement on the independent redemption of oneself by a slave, are considered. Cases of the release of slaves on religious grounds are described, and the possibilities for them to go to court for legal assistance are described. All the facts of legal precedents given in the article are supported by information from the Crimean Cadi sijils. In conclusion, concepts are given regarding the system of slavery adopted in the khanate.
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Pargas, Damian Alan. "“Urban Refugees: Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Informal Freedom in the American South”." Journal of Early American History 7, no. 3 (November 8, 2017): 262–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18770703-00703002.
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Slave flight in the antebellum South did not always coincide with the political geography of freedom. Indeed, spaces and places within the South attracted the largest number of fugitive slaves, especially southern cities, where runaway slaves attempted to pass for free blacks. Disguising themselves within the slaveholding states rather than risk long-distance flight attempts to formally free territories such as the northern us, Canada, and Mexico, fugitive slaves in southern cities attempted to escape slavery by crafting clandestine lives for themselves in what I am calling “informal” freedom—a freedom that did not exist on paper and had no legal underpinnings, but that existed in practice, in the shadows. This article briefly examines the experiences of fugitive slaves who fled to southern cities in the antebellum period (roughly 1800–1860). It touches upon themes such as the motivations for fleeing to urban areas, the networks that facilitated such flight attempts, and, most importantly, the lot of runaway slaves after arrival in urban areas.
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Patel, Tara. "Distant Voices Then and Now: The Impact of Isolation on the Courtroom Narratives of Slave Ship Captives and Asylum Seekers." Michigan Journal of Race & Law, no. 23.1 (2018): 155. http://dx.doi.org/10.36643/mjrl.23.1.distant.
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Part I compares the nineteenth century cases of the Antelope and the Amistad to identify why they resulted in different outcomes despite having similar fact patterns. The Antelope concerned the fate of approximately 280 African captives discovered on a slave trade ship upon its interception by a U.S. revenue cutter. Since the slave trade in the United States was illegal at the time, the captives were transported to Savannah for trial through which their status—free or slave—would be determined. After a lengthy trial and appeals process in which Spain and Portugal laid claim to the captives, the Supreme Court determined that those captives claimed by a non-U.S. nation were slaves. The Court reasons that however “abhorrent” the slave trade was, the United States was obligated to recognize the rights of other nations to participate in it. In comparison, the Amistad concerned the fate of captives aboard a slave trade ship in which the captives committed mutiny, attempted to sail to Africa, but were captured by a U.S. vessel. The Supreme Court ordered them free despite the Spanish government’s claim that the captives were its property. Part I explores these different outcomes and argues that the absence of Antelope captives’ stories in the litigation process was partly due to the decision to isolate captives in slavery before their status was determined. In particular, it argues that this isolation affected the outcome of the Antelope by preventing captives from sharing their anecdotes and translating them to a format that would resonate with their legal counsel, the public, and judges. In contrast, the Amistad captives, while also detained, were situated close to those who could help them. They were able to transform their truths into a winning narrative for the court by understanding and leveraging the talents and expertise of counsel, and the biases of judges and the public. Part II argues that 200 years later, a similar environment of isolation suppresses the stories of another group with undetermined legal status: asylum seekers. Although slave ship captives were forced into the country with chains, while asylum seekers are driven into the country by fear, the legal status of both groups in their respective time periods was undetermined upon their arrival. Both groups deserved, by legal and moral standards, the opportunity to present the truth behind their arrival and to prove their legal status. Part II argues that the detention of asylum seekers mirrors the isolation of the Antelope captives by removing detainees from those most able to help them develop a persuasive narrative truth. Detention silences important voices, aggravates ineffective representation, damages public perception, and ultimately harms case outcomes.
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Bandžović, Sead. "Ropstvo u Antičkom Rimu." Historijski pogledi 6, no. 9 (June 20, 2023): 391–409. http://dx.doi.org/10.52259/historijskipogledi.2023.6.9.391.
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The institution of slavery was characteristic of all the civilizations from Mediterranean basin in ancient times. However, slavery had its widest application in the Roman state, for which it was of immense importance, since slaves were seen as the driving force of Roman social and economic system. Slaves (servus, puer) were treated as “speaking tools” (instrumentum vocale). The position of the individual in the Roman state was regulated in detail, and there were three special positions: status civitatis (Roman citizen or foreigner), status familiae (elder of the family or its member under the rule of pater familias) and status libertatis (slave or free man). Slaves had a special legal status in Roman law at the time. Unlike animals and things over which power was referred to as domicium, this was about power over man, so the term domicia potestas was used. In the initial stages of the development of state and the law, they were viewed exclusively as property, without any personal, property or other rights. Thus the puer could not be a party to the proceedings, and his union with the slave girl was treated as a de facto union (contubernium), not as a valid marriage. He could only improve the position of his master, and if the servus would cause some damage to a third party, the master was not obliged to eliminate it, but according to Aquilius law of damage from 287 AD there was a possibility of handing over the slave to the injured party according to the principles of noxal liability. An individual could find himself in the status of a slave in three ways: by falling into captivity in war, by being born to a slave mother (vernae) or by losing his freedom as a form of sanction. In addition to private and royal, there were also so-called public slaves (servi publici). Their owner was not a private person, but a wider social community, and power over them was officially exercised by the Roman people (populus Romanus), civilian authorities in municipalities or colonies in Italy and its provinces. Servi publici were most often employed by magistrates or priests, and they also worked as guardians of various Roman buildings: basilicas, temples, archives and libraries. Roman law also knew of other forms of subordination that were not a form of slavery but states similar to it. The first aspect referred to persons in mancipio who were handed over by the pater famillias through mancipation to another elder as labor or to avoid tortious liability. The second case concerned addictus. Under the old civil law (ius civile) the addictus was a debtor in a certain obligatory relationship where, in case of non-payment of his obligation, he would be assigned to the creditor. The creditor had to keep him in the so-called creditor’s imprisonment for 60 days, until a guarantor appeared or the debt was repaid. If this did not happen, the debtor could be killed or sold as a slave. Persons redeemed from captivity (redempti ab hostibus) could be held captive by the redeemer until the ransom is paid either in money or by the work of the redeemed person. During the period of the empire, the duration of captivity of this kind could last for a maximum of 5 years. Gai Institutiones also classified auctoratus in these states. These included men, women and minor children who undertook to work for a person for a certain period of time (iudicati). Liberation from slavery was done through a special legal procedure (manumissio). In the early epochs of the ius civile, it was of an extremely formal nature, and with later praetorian activity this formalism was abandoned and replaced by new, more efficient legal means.
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Welch, Kimberly. "William Johnson's Hypothesis: A Free Black Man and the Problem of Legal Knowledge in the Antebellum United States South." Law and History Review 37, no. 1 (February 2019): 89–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0738248018000640.
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This essay uses the diary of free black barber and Natchez, Mississippi, businessman William T. Johnson as a means to explore the extent to which one black man in the antebellum U.S. South knew the law; how he came to know it; and what role he saw it play in his life and community. In recent years, scholars have paid increasing attention to black Americans' engagement with the legal system in the pre-Civil War U.S. South and have undermined the notion that black people were legal outsiders. In particular, they have shown that African Americans in the slave South were legal actors in their own right and were legally savvy. Yet what does it mean when scholars say that free blacks and slaves knew how to use the law? This essay uses Johnson's diary to demystify the phrase “to know the law” and shows that we speak of “knowing the law,” we speak of a remarkably complex and uneven phenomenon, one best mapped on a case-to-case basis. Understanding what it meant “to know the law” sometimes requires examining an individual's personal theory or hypothesis of what law does for them.
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Simeonov, Simeon Andonov. "“Insurgentes, Self-Styled Patriots”." Journal of Global Slavery 5, no. 3 (October 22, 2020): 291–321. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2405836x-00503004.
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Abstract This article argues that Iberian consulates in the United States identified the emergence of a “privateering archipelago,” a new revolutionary interimperial legal/economic regime stretching from Rhode Island to the greater Caribbean in the post-Napoleonic decade. Spanish consuls’ successful navigation of the privateering archipelago enabled them to expand the power of Cuban slavers into the southern U.S. Spanish consuls’ confrontation with privateers became a driving force in the revival of the slave trade after its international condemnation at the Congress of Vienna (1815). Even though there were many ways in which Spanish consulates used the entanglement between privateering and slaving to strengthen the colonial hold on slavery, it was by means of whitening passports that they sought to institutionalize their power in the privateering archipelago. Intended to disenfranchise free gente de color and to re-commodify African slaves, the policy of whitening passports ended up marginalizing mariners and alienating them from consuls.
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Lymar, Marharyta. "Thorny Evolution Path of the US Society: Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement." American History & Politics Scientific edition, no. 9 (2020): 101–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/2521-1706.2020.09.9.
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The article focuses on studying the evolution of the U.S. society and exploring phenomena of racism and slavery. Given the fact that the modern American society is considered as the field of numerous opportunities for every person, it is worth to track its transformation and to identify the key milestones or turning points of the U.S. history in this regard. The author identifies racism as one of the slavery’s reasons, condemning the both phenomena and exploring the ways of resisting them among Americans in the first years of the United States of America as a new independent and single state. Thus, the following tasks of the research are defined: to determine the concepts of racism and slavery; to find out the origins and background of slavery in the early period of the U.S. establishing; to explore the status of African Americans in the U.S. society as well as dual standards of equality between Americans; to track the evolution of American society’s views on slavery and discrimination; and to observe the consequences of the Abolitionist movement for the further development of the U.S. society. It is stated that the black Africans appeared in the British colonies of North America because of inevitable labor problem, faced by the first settlers, forced to seek cheap or free labor hands. Primary, the Africans were brought to America as indentured staff. In 1640–1641, in Massachusetts, some types of slavery became allowed, and the other states followed such a suit. Slaves were brought from the slave factories established along the west coast of Africa from Cape Verde to the equator. The enslaved Africans did not put up with fate and protested in various ways, supported by the sympathetic Whites (philanthropists, Quakers, pastors, statesmen). Regular uprisings, protests, and strikes, the spread of agitation literature greatly contributed to protection of slaves. Thus, the Abolitionist movement was founded. Thanks to it, the slave owners were resisted, the proper laws were adopted and slavery was eventually abolished. However, the legal abolition did not totally eradicate racism from the subconscious of Americans, which is now echoed.
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Smith Naro, Nancy Priscilla. "Customary Rightholders and Legal Claimants to Land in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1870-1890." Americas 48, no. 4 (April 1992): 485–517. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1006744.
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The transition from slave to free labor in the Americas involved many and varied forms of internal labor and land adjustments which affected slaves, landless farmers, and large scale producers in rural areas. Unlike Haiti and the United States South, the Brazilian process of emancipation was gradual and did not involve violent structural ruptures with the past. The Land Law of 1850, the Law of the Free Womb of 1871 and the 1885 Sexagenarian Law marked fundamental phases in an ongoing process of state participation in the organization of the free labor market, which culminated in Abolition on 13 May 1888, and the onset of the Republic on 15 November of the following year. Current analyses of the late nineteenth century emphasize continuity and define the state as its own agent, embarking on a course of conservative modernization which unfolded during the process of transition from the liberalism of a nineteenth-century empire to the interventionist Republic which was ushered in, in 1889. The planter class, joined with emerging but weak Brazilian industrial and financial sectors and upheld by the military, contributed to an Estado Oligárquico, in Marcelo Carmagnani's terminology, linked by coffee production into the world economy as a flourishing dependent peripheral economy. But the process, which until recently was associated with the coffee export sector and its relation to urbanization and industrialization, has now taken on broader dimensions. A developed domestic economy, composed of a complex and sophisticated internal food supply network, operated alongside the export economy throughout the nineteenth century. Although unstudied from the political perspective of small-scale food producers who were displaced by the coffee economy, the broader issue of food provision could not be dissociated from conservative modernization, the basic issues of which would be carried forth during the course of the First Republic in the form of “Ruralismo.”
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Kello, Katrin, and Hesi Siimets-Gross. "Kohtuasjad in puncto libertatis: isiku staatuse tuvastamise lähtekohad asehaldusaja Eestimaal [Abstract: Court cases in puncto libertatis: criteria of ascertaining a person’s status during the Regency Era (1783–1796) in the province of Estland]." Ajalooline Ajakiri. The Estonian Historical Journal, no. 2/3 (January 15, 2018): 257. http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/aa.2017.2-3.04.
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This paper analyses court cases, a hitherto little acknowledged source in Estonian history of early modern law. Specifically, we analyse six cases where a person’s status – that of a free man or of a serf – was at stake. We ask how different sources of law were used in the claims of the parties and the judgments of the courts, and which arguments and interpretations were drawn upon. The cases took place about two to three decades before the abolishment of serfdom in the province. They are of interest from the perspective of the history of early modern serfdom, modern reception of Roman law and the hierarchy of legal sources, as well as with regard to the history of the Enlightenment and human rights. The court cases illustrate how legal practice participates in discourses of its time. They shed light on the legal situation during the Regency Era, when Estland’s local system of justice was altered with the aim of harmonising the administrative system in the Russian Empire.
The scarcity of such cases is explained by the fact that they affected only a small portion of the population of the province of Estland. Of the approximately 200,000 people living in the countryside, only 3.5 per cent were of free status – mainly people such as craftsmen, millers, sextons, innkeepers, and manor servants. It is not surprising that there were even fewer persons of borderline status who could go to court to claim their freedom. Peasant families of foreign origin, families descending from sextons, and a manor servant figure in the trials.
The court cases were shaped by the scarcity of local law and the uncertainty of court practice under Regency. There was no provision in Estland’s written law concerning the two central questions in the trials – the expiry and the relinquishment of a person’s freedom. The most relevant stipulation was a 30-year limit, after which the affiliation of runaway peasants expired. Whether a court considered it possible to carry this limitation over to the expiry of a person’s freedom as well depended on the court’s interpretation of both local custom and the current legal situation. Local custom and earlier Russian ordinances permitted the enserfment of free persons, whereas more recent ordinances prohibited it. The question arose in the courts concerning the extent to which the more recent provisions should be implemented retroactively, and how to relate the ‘spirit of the age’ manifested in them to local custom. Moreover, if a court considered it appropriate to apply the provisions concerning Roman slaves or coloni to local serfs, it had to consider the prohibition in Roman law against enserfing free persons and negating the possibility of expiry of freedom.
In fact, the judgments depended on the court’s understanding of the applicability of favor libertatis in Roman law – the principle that court judgments were to be pronounced in favour of freedom in cases where there was evidence of equal weight in favour of a person’s serfdom and freedom. Deriving from favor libertatis, the principle of praesumptio libertatis stated that what had to be proven was a person’s slave or serf status, not their freedom. Therefore, applying Roman slave law to local serfs was beneficial for claimants of freedom, whereas for landlords it was useful to state a difference between Roman slavery and local serfdom. Estate owners also claimed that in provinces like Estland, presumption of serfdom was to be applied in cases concerning peasants. The question of whether or not someone appeared like a ‘normal peasant’ hence became one of the issues discussed in court.
We can see a certain consolidation of court practice over time. The courts applied Roman law in the event that they wished to take the ‘spirit of the age’ into account: when they needed to ground the position that a free man could not have been enserfed even prior to Catherine’s ordinances that prohibited enserfment. In the two earliest cases in the 1780s, the court of first instance applied Roman law almost exclusively in justifying its positions. In the three subsequent cases, living like a serf for 30 years, or having been registered among the serfs of an estate during land audits was seen either as evidence of the expiry of freedom, or as evidence of the acceptance of serf status, yet without referring to any specific legal provision. Thus, over time the courts’ emphasis shifted from applying “foreign law” towards local practice and Russian regulations. The sixth court case was exceptional in that the person in question was a manor servant rather than a peasant. In his case, the central questions were whether a soldier had the right to grant freedom to his servant, who was given to him by his parents to accompany him in war, and whether or not returning to the manor to serve as a valet entailed becoming a serf once again.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Legal status of slaves in free states"
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Sandeen, Loucynda Elayne. "Who Owns This Body? Enslaved Women's Claim on Themselves." PDXScholar, 2013. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1492.
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During the antebellum period of U.S. slavery (1830-1861), many people claimed ownership of the enslaved woman's body, both legally and figuratively. The assumption that they were merely property, however, belies the unstable, shifting truths about bodily ownership. This thesis inquires into the gendered specifics and ambiguities of the law, the body, and women under slavery. By examining the particular bodily regulation and exploitation of enslaved women, especially around their reproductive labor, I suggest that new operations of oppression and also of resistance come into focus.
The legal structure recognized enslaved women in the interest of owners, and this limitation was defining, meaning that justice flowed in one direction. If married white women were "civilly dead," as famously evoked by the Declaration of Sentiments (1848) then enslaved women were civilly non-existent. The law controlled, but did not protect slaves, and a number of opponents to slavery denounced this contradictory scenario during the antebellum era (and before). Literally, enslaved women were claimed by their masters, purchased and sold as chattel. Physically, they were claimed by those men (both white and black) who sought to have power over them. Symbolically, they were claimed by anti-slavers and pro-slavers alike when it suited their purposes, often in the domains of news and literature, for the sake of advancing their ideas, a rich record of which fills court cases, newsprint, and propaganda touching the slavery issue before the civil war.
Due to the numerous ways that enslaved women's bodies have been claimed, owned, or circulated in markets, it may have been considered implicit to many that others owned their bodies. I believe that this is an oversimplified historical supposition that needs to be re-theorized. Indeed, enslaved women lived in a time when they were often led to believe that their bodies were not truly their own, and yet, many of them resisted their particular forms of oppression by claiming ownership of their bodies and those of their children; sometimes using rather extreme methods to keep from contributing to their oppression. In other words, slave owners' monopoly of the legal, economic, and logistical meanings of ownership of slaves had to be constantly reaffirmed and negotiated. This thesis asks: who owned the enslaved woman's body? I seek to emphasize that enslaved women were valid claimants of themselves as can seen in primary sources that today have only been given limited expression in the historiography.
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Heniford, Kellen. "Slavery Is Slavery: Early American Mythmaking and the Invention of the Free State." Thesis, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-59ch-xj66.
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This dissertation reveals the origins of one of early US history’s most frequently evoked concepts: the northern “free state.” Beginning in the colonial era and ending with the Civil War, “Slavery Is Slavery: Early American Mythmaking and the Invention of the Free State” follows two threads simultaneously: first, the changing meaning of the term “free state,” and, second, the politics of enslavement and freedom in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, the three states whose relationship to slavery seemed most unsure at the Founding. Relying on the methods of conceptual history, this dissertation reveals that for the first several decades of US history, “free state” signified a self-governing, republican entity, and the phrase only came to be associated with slavery after around the year 1820. Even then, the exact geography it represented remained contested, especially in the lower Mid-Atlantic. The confluence of a developing free labor economy and growing northern antislavery sentiment combined to create the conditions for the “free state” to take on a new meaning—the one historians have inherited and continue to employ today.
Books on the topic "Legal status of slaves in free states"
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1949-, Finkelman Paul, ed. Southern slaves in free state courts: The pamphlet literature. New York: Garland, 1988.
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Middleton, Stephen. The Black laws in the Old Northwest: A documentary history. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1993.
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Harrold, Stanley. Border war: Fighting over slavery before the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
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Loren, Schweninger, Maxwell Lisa, Bowser Chad, and Race and Slavery Petitions Project., eds. Race, slavery, and free Blacks. Bethesda, MD: LexisNexis, 2002.
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Washington University (Saint Louis, Mo.). Libraries. and Saint Louis (Mo.). Circuit Court., eds. The Dred Scott case. St. Louis, MO: Washington University in St. Louis, 2000.
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United States Capitol Historical Society, ed. Congress and the crisis of the 1850s. Athens: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by Ohio University Press, 2011.
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1949-, Finkelman Paul, ed. Free Blacks, slaves, and slaveowners in civil and criminal courts: The pamphlet literature. New York: Garland, 1988.
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Konig, David Thomas. The Dred Scott case: Historical and contemporary perspectives on race and law. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010.
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Wilson, Carol. Freedom at risk: The kidnapping of free Blacks in America, 1780-1865. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.
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Congress, Library of, ed. Slavery in the courtroom: An annotated bibliography of American cases. Washington: Library of Congress, 1985.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Legal status of slaves in free states"
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Bonazza, Giulia. "Slavery in the Mediterranean." In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History, 227–42. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_13.
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AbstractThis chapter focuses on slavery in the Mediterranean region from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and especially in the Northern Mediterranean basin, including the Italian states, France, Spain, and Portugal. Comparing the situation in Southern European states to that in the Ottoman Empire and its satellite states enables an analysis of the forms of reciprocity and the commonalities inherent in slave trade practices around the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean was at the center of larger slave trading networks whose slaves originated from all over the world. More specifically, this chapter examines various forms of enslavement and types of work performed by slaves, along with the different levels of coercion involved in them. In its conclusion, the chapter details some of the exit strategies that enabled slaves to become free—both in socio-economic terms and from a legal perspective.
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Maggs, Peter B. "The Uncertain Legal Status of Free and Open Source Software in the United States." In Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law, 477–93. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21560-0_25.
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Ruef, Martin. "Status Attainment among Emancipated Slaves." In Between Slavery and Capitalism. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691162775.003.0003.
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This chapter analyzes the legacy of slavery for status attainment among the first generation of blacks who were liberated from this institution. Its quantitative findings suggest that categorical uncertainty became more pronounced over time: while the internal hierarchy of slavery clearly predicted the occupations that emancipated blacks would hold after the Civil War, it became largely decoupled from status attainment in the succeeding decades. Mediating effects, such as the Freedmen Bureau's educational interventions and black migration, also served to curtail the reproduction of antebellum status. By the early twentieth century, the most durable predictor of the kinds of jobs that were available to blacks who had been born in the antebellum South was the legal distinction between those who were free and those who were slaves before 1865.
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McPherson, Lionel K. "Slavery Subcaste Drama." In The Afterlife of Race, 135–36. Oxford University PressNew York, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197626849.003.0022.
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Abstract As descendants of American slavery, Black Americans typically have substantial mixed African and European ancestry. The English legal doctrine partus sequitur ventrem (“that which is born follows the womb”) determined the “Free” versus “Slaves” status of American children and eventually morphed into a “race” rule. This case study of “mixed race” is about a slavery society that later invested in race ideology-rhetoric to mystify and distract from gross injustice. The foundational color-conscious division in America was between Europe-identified “Free White” persons and Africa-identified “Slaves.” After the Civil War, the “Slaves” caste was relabeled by “color” on the US census, with a “race” category alone not appearing until 1950. Except for the period 1930 to 1990, the United States always officially recognized persons of Afro-Anglo descent: “black” or “mulatto” was the standard description.
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Baumgartner, Alice L. "Fugitive Slaves, Free Soil, and the Contest over Sovereignty in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1821–1867." In Continent in Crisis, 19–35. Fordham University Press, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9781531501280.003.0002.
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This essay examines changing conceptions of sovereignty in Mexico and the United States by tracing their evolving policies with respect to fugitive slaves. In the wake of its war with the United States, the Mexican government adopted policies that granted freedom to all enslaved people who set foot on its soil. Territory accorded rights, rather than race. In the United States, the conquest of Mexican territory—the first time that the United States had acquired territory where slavery was abolished by law—also transformed understanding of sovereignty. With the balance of power between the slaveholding and nonslaveholding states under threat, southern politicians adopted the view that the Constitution protected enslaved property everywhere in the United States, even in states and territories where slavery was abolished. From this perspective, slavery was no longer a legal condition, from which enslaved people could escape, but a permanent status, defined by race.
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Kamen, Deborah. "Conclusion." In Status in Classical Athens. Princeton University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691138138.003.0012.
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This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. Through close analysis of various forms of evidence—literary, epigraphic, and legal—this book demonstrated that classical Athens had a spectrum of statuses, ranging from the base chattel slave to the male citizen with full civic rights. It showed that Athenian democracy was in practice both more inclusive and more exclusive than one might expect based on its civic ideology: more inclusive in that even slaves and noncitizens “shared in” the democratic polis, more exclusive in that not all citizens were equal participants in the social, economic, and political life of the city. The book also showed the flexibility of status boundaries, seemingly in opposition to the dominant ideology of two or three status groups divided neatly from one another: slave versus free, citizen versus noncitizen, or slave versus metic versus citizen.
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Nasrallah, Laura Salah. "On Slaves and Other Things." In Archaeology and the Letters of Paul, 40–75. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199699674.003.0003.
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This chapter argues that the letters of Paul are thoroughly infused with the slave-trading mentalities of the Roman world. Greek and Roman law and literature present the enslaved person as being both person and thing. Onesimus, a slave passed between Paul and Philemon, appears as such a person and thing in Paul’s letter to Philemon. Ephesos was a likely location of the household of Philemon. Within the city, we find evidence of slaves, slave traders, and the regulation of the lives of the enslaved. Additional evidence from Corinth and Delphi indicates the complex lives even of manumitted slaves, who retained ties to their former masters. The chapter concludes by arguing that those who first received the letters of Paul and their language of slavery and discussion of slave status would have been provoked to consider their own legal and social situations and the possibility of being slave, free, or in between.
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Ranney, Joseph A. "Legal Legacies of War and Reconstruction." In A Legal History of Mississippi, 76–102. University Press of Mississippi, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496822574.003.0005.
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The Civil War destroyed Mississippi’s slave system and its antebellum economy. From 1865 to 1890, lawmakers struggled to define the legal status and rights of newly-freed slaves and to build a new, more diversified economy. The era was marked by sharp legal shifts. Mississippi created one of the nation’s harshest postwar black codes (1866) but then followed a more liberal course during Reconstruction, enacting one of the nation’s first anti-segregation laws (1873). After Reconstruction, the state’s 1890 constitutional convention showed other Southern states how they could prevent blacks from voting while avoiding federal scrutiny. The shifting times were exemplified by Horatio Simrall, a legislator and judge who helped create the 1866 black code and 1890 anti-suffrage provisions but also upheld the 1873 anti-segregation law; and Isaiah Montgomery, who fought for black economic independence but, to the surprise of both races, supported the 1890 suffrage restrictions and urged his fellow blacks not to resist.
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Feldman, Stephen M. "Modern American Legal Thought." In American Legal Thought from Prernodernisrn to Postrnodernisrn, 83–136. Oxford University PressNew York, NY, 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195109665.003.0004.
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Abstract As a general matter, prominent transitions in intellectual thought often seem to follow momentous social upheavals. True to form, then, the Civil War proved to be a cataclysm that triggered intellectual changes of paradigmatic proportions. Even more broadly, beyond the intellectual sphere, the war and its aftermath, including the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, ushered in momentous changes in almost every imaginable realm of American society.1 The historian Peter J. Parish proclaims the Civil War “the central event of American history,” while Eric Foner, discussing the war and the ensuing years, declares that “no aspect of life remained unaffected.” The war of course began in 1861 because the states of the deep South seceded, so the Northern states initially fought to preserve the Union and only later to free the slaves. Eventually, though, many Northerners understood the struggle as one for the very progress of civilization, yet ironically, the American civilization was, in the end, thoroughly transformed. Most basically, the eradication of slavery together with the death or maiming of one-fourth of the young male population profoundly transformed the social fabric of America.2
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Irons, Peter. "“Beings of an Inferior Order”." In White Men's Law, 59–76. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190914943.003.0004.
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This chapter discusses the role of the legal system, including the Supreme Court, in upholding the constitutionality of slavery. It first examines the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania in 1842, in which the Supreme Court reversed the conviction in state court of Edward Prigg, a professional slave-catcher, for kidnapping Margaret Morgan, who escaped from slavery in Maryland to the free state of Pennsylvania. Ruling that state officials could not hinder enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, the Court also held that state officials could decline to aid slave-catchers, leading to mass demonstrations in Boston over the “rendition” of escaped slaves George Latimer and Anthony Burns. The chapter includes a recounting of the infamous Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, in which Chief Justice Roger Taney held that no Black person was a citizen and that Blacks were “an inferior order of beings” who had “no rights that the white man was bound to respect.” The chapter concludes with a discussion of the impact of the Dred Scott ruling on the presidential campaign of 1860, in which Abraham Lincoln denounced the decision and provoked the slave states to secede from the Union and launch the Civil War.
Conference papers on the topic "Legal status of slaves in free states"
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Aziz Sadiq Kasnazany, Taib. "Prosecute and punish the perpetrators of sexual violence against Yazidis as a crime against humanity, even the possible genocide committed by ISIS." In Peacebuilding and Genocide Prevention. University of Human Development, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.21928/uhdicpgp/61.
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"Abstract On the 3rd of August 2014, ISIS fighters attacked the Sinjar region in northern of Iraq, mostly populated by Yazidis, a religious minority. In almost 3 days, most of the villages in the region were vacated and their residents captured. These events mark the beginning of a campaign of extreme violence that has left men and women apart. Adult men were massacred while girls and women were held for sale as sex slaves. More than 7 years after these events, no prosecution has been brought by International Criminal Court. States are unwilling to try their nationals guilty of crimes of genocide against the Yazidis. This paper aims to analyze the genocide of the Yazidis from the perspective of sexual violence and in particular to determine whether it can be considered to the status of genocide. The origins and legal sources of the genocide are first analyzed. This violence is then examined in the light of certain elements constituting the crime of genocide. Finally, the challenges to be met in the fight against impunity in International Criminal Court are mentioned in the conclusion."
Reports on the topic "Legal status of slaves in free states"
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Cordella, Tito, and Andrew Powell. Preferred and Non-Preferred Creditors. Inter-American Development Bank, March 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0003109.
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International financial institutions (IFIs) generally enjoy preferred creditors treatment (PCT). Although PCT rarely appears in legal contracts, when sovereigns restructure bilateral or commercial debts, they normally pay IFIs in full. This paper presents a model where a creditor, such as an IFI, that can commit to lend limited amounts at the risk-free rate and can refrain from lending into arrears is always repaid and adds value. The analysis suggests that IFIs and market lenders can both enhance welfare, even if banning commercial borrowing can sometimes be optimal. To maintain their status, preferred lenders should offer low cost financing in volumes that are consistent with countries' incentives to repay even in bad states. This suggests such lenders should not differentiate lending interest rates according to risk and should not participate in the restructuring of commercial debt.