Homicide justified : the legality of killing slaves in the United States and the Atlantic world

Resource Information

The work Homicide justified : the legality of killing slaves in the United States and the Atlantic world represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of San Diego Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Homicide justified : the legality of killing slaves in the United States and the Atlantic world

Title remainder

the legality of killing slaves in the United States and the Atlantic world

Statement of responsibility

Andrew T. Fede

Creator

• Fede, Andrew

Author

• Fede, Andrew

Subject

• Slavery -- Law and legislation -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History
• Slavery -- Law and legislation -- United States -- History
• Slaves -- Legal status, laws, etc
• Slaves -- Violence against -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History
• Slaves -- Violence against -- United States -- History
• Homicide -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History
• Homicide -- United States -- History

Language

eng

Summary

"This comparative study looks at the laws concerning the murder of slaves by their masters and at how these laws were implemented. [The author] cites a wide range of cases-across time, place, and circumstance-to illuminate legal, judicial, and other complexities surrounding this regrettably common occurrence. These laws had evolved to limit in different ways the masters' rights to severely punish and even kill their slaves while protecting valuable enslaved people, understood as 'property, ' from wanton destruction by hirers, overseers, and poor whites who did not own slaves. To explore the conflicts of masters' rights with state and colonial laws, [the author] shows how slave homicide law evolved and was enforced not only in the United States but also in ancient Roman, Visigoth, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British jurisdictions. [The author's] comparative approach reveals how legal reforms regarding slave homicide in antebellum times, like past reforms dictated by emperors and kings, were the products of changing perceptions of the interests of the public; of the individual slave owners; and of the slave owners' families, heirs, and creditors. Although some slave murders came to be regarded as capital offenses, the laws con-sistently reinforced the second-class status of slaves. This influence...flowed over into the application of law to free African Americans and would even make itself felt in the legal attitudes that underlay the Jim Crow era."--

Member of

• Southern legal studies

Assigning source

Back cover

Cataloging source

DLC

Index

index present

LC call number

KF4545.S5

LC item number

F417 2017

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Southern legal studies