Osgoode Hall Law School Library

Subject:

Slavery » Law and legislation » United States » History » 19th century.

Subject:

Jurisprudence » Southern States » History » 19th century.

Subject:

Southern States » Intellectual life » 19th century.

Subject:

History.

Title:

University, court, and slave : pro-slavery thought in southern colleges and courts and the coming of civil war / Alfred L. Brophy.

Main Author:

Brophy, Alfred L.,

Language:

English

Published:

Oxford University Press, 2016

Portion of Title:

Pro-slavery thought in southern colleges and courts and the coming of civil war

Summary:

"This book reveals long-forgotten connections between pre-Civil War southern universities and slavery. Universities and their faculty owned people-sometimes dozens of people-and profited from their labor while many slaves endured physical abuse on campuses. The profits of enslaved labor helped pay for education, and faculty and students at times actively promoted the institution. They wrote about the history of slavery, argued for its central role in the southern economy, and developed a political theory that justified slavery. The university faculty spoke a common language of economic utility, history, and philosophy with those who made the laws for the southern states. Their extensive writing promoting slavery helps us understand how southern politicians and judges thought about the practice. As Alfred L. Brophy shows, southern universities fought the emancipation movement for economic reasons, but used history, philosophy, and law in an attempt to justify their position. The combination of economic reasoning and historical precedent helped shape a southern, proslavery jurisprudence. Bolstered by the courts, academics took their case to the southern public-and ultimately to the battlefield-to defend slavery. A path-breaking and deeply researched history of southern universities' investment in and defense of slavery, this book will fundamentally transform our understanding of the institutional foundations of pro-slavery thought."

Physical Description:

xxvi, 373 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Bibliography:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-361) and index.

ISBN:

9780199964239

0199964238

Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2016]

Copyright Notice Date:

©2016

• Timeline
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I. The contours of academic pro-slavery thought. The rebel and the professor : Nat Turner, Thomas Roderick Dew and the utility of slavery
• Pro-slavery academic thought in the 1840s and 1850s
• The southern scholar
• Brown University's president confronts slavery
• The chancellor, the slave, and the student
• Part II. Connecting moral philosophy and legal thought. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 : the grammar of pro-slavery thought
• The novelist and the jurist : Harriet Beecher Stowe's jurisprudence of sentiment
• Part III. The core of southern legal thought. Beyond State v. Mann : Thomas Ruffin's jurisprudence
• Joseph Henry Lumpkin : industrialism and slavery in the old south
• Pro-slavery jurisprudence : Thomas Reade Roots Cobb's An inquiry into the law of negro slavery
• "The dictate of a wise policy" : judicial opposition to freedom
• Slavery, property, and constitutionalism in the secession debates.