The People and Their Peace

by Edwards, Laura F.

• ISBN13: 9780807832639
• ISBN10: 0807832634
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

In the half-century following the Revolutionary War, the logic of inequality underwent a profound transformation within the southern legal system. Drawing on extensive archival research in North and South Carolina, Laura F. Edwards illuminates those changes by revealing the importance of localized legal practice.Edwards shows that following the Revolution, the intensely local legal system favored maintaining the "peace," a concept intended to protect the social order and its patriarchal hierarchies. Ordinary people, rather than legal professionals and political leaders, were central to its workings. Those without rights--even slaves--had influence within the system because of their positions of subordination, not in spite of them. By the 1830s, however, state leaders had secured support for a more centralized system that excluded people who were not specifically granted individual rights, including women, African Americans, and the poor. Edwards concludes that the emphasis on rights affirmed and restructured existing patriarchal inequalities, giving them new life within state law with implications that affected all Americans.Placing slaves, free blacks, and white women at the center of the story,The People and Their Peacerecasts traditional narratives of legal and political change and sheds light on key issues in U.S. history, including the persistence of inequality--particularly slavery--in the face of expanding democracy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Distant Thunder	p. 1
Introduction	p. 3
All Was Chaos in Our Legal World: Excavating Localized Law from beneath the Layers of Southern History	p. 26
Localized Law	p. 55
Keeping the Peace: People's Proximity to Law	p. 64
Bread from Chaff: Defining Offenses against the Peace	p. 100
Possession and the Personality of Property: The Material Basis of Authority	p. 133
Wasted Substance: The Operation and Regulation of Patriarchy	p. 169
State Law	p. 203
Subjects vs. Rights-Holding Individuals	p. 220
New States: Freemen as Consistent Units of Measure	p. 256
Conclusion	p. 286
Notes	p. 299
Bibliography	p. 375
Index	p. 411
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