Prestatehood Legal Materials
Prestatehood Legal Materials

Author: Michael Chiorazzi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 1539

ISBN-13: 1136766022

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Explore the controversial legal history of the formation of the United States Prestatehood Legal Materials is your one-stop guide to the history and development of law in the U.S. and the change from territory to statehood. Unprecedented in its coverage of territorial government, this book identifies a wide range of available resources from each state to reveal the underlying legal principles that helped form the United States. In this unique publication, a state expert compiles each chapter using his or her own style, culminating in a diverse sourcebook that is interesting as well as informative. In Prestatehood Legal Materials, you will find bibliographies, references, and discussion on a varied list of source materials, including: state codes drafted by Congress county, state, and national archives journals and digests state and federal reports, citations, surveys, and studies books, manuscripts, papers, speeches, and theses town and city records and documents Web sites to help your search for more information and more Prestatehood Legal Materials provides you with brief overviews of state histories from colonization to acceptance into the United States. In this book, you will see how foreign countries controlled the laws of these territories and how these states eventually broke away to govern themselves. The text also covers the legal issues with Native Americans, inter-state and the Mexico and Canadian borders, and the development of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of state government. This guide focuses on materials that are readily available to historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and researchers. Resources that assist in locating not-so-easily accessible materials are also covered. Special sections focus on the legal resources of colonial New York City and Washington, DC—which is still technically in its prestatehood stage. Due to the enormity of this project, the editor of Prestatehood Legal Materials created a Web page where updates, corrections, additions and more will be posted.

The Encyclopedia of New York State
The Encyclopedia of New York State

Author: Peter Eisenstadt

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2005-05-19

Total Pages: 1960

ISBN-13: 9780815608080

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The Encyclopedia of New York State is one of the most complete works on the Empire State to be published in a half-century. In nearly 2,000 pages and 4,000 signed entries, this single volume captures the impressive complexity of New York State as a historic crossroads of people and ideas, as a cradle of abolitionism and feminism, and as an apex of modern urban, suburban, and rural life. The Encyclopedia is packed with fascinating details from fields ranging from sociology and geography to history. Did you know that Manhattan's Lower East Side was once the most populated neighborhood in the world, but Hamilton County in the Adirondacks is the least densely populated county east of the Mississippi; New York is the only state to border both the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean; the Erie Canal opened New York City to rich farmland upstate . . . and to the west. Entries by experts chronicle New York's varied areas, politics, and persuasions with a cornucopia of subjects from environmentalism to higher education to railroads, weaving the state's diverse regions and peoples into one idea of New York State. Lavishly illustrated with 500 photographs and figures, 120 maps, and 140 tables, the Encyclopedia is key to understanding the state's past, present, and future. It is a crucial reference for students, teachers, historians, and business people, for New Yorkers of all persuasions, and for anyone interested in finding out more about New York State.

Discretionary Justice
Discretionary Justice

Author: Carolyn Strange

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2016-12-20

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1479899925

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The pardon is an act of mercy, tied to the divine right of kings. Why did New York retain this mode of discretionary justice after the Revolution? And how did governors’ use of this prerogative change with the advent of the penitentiary and the introduction of parole? This book answers these questions by mining previously unexplored evidence held in official pardon registers, clemency files, prisoner aid association reports and parole records. This is the first book to analyze the histories of mercy and parole through the same lens, as related but distinct forms of discretionary decision-making. It draws on governors’ public papers and private correspondence to probe their approach to clemency, and it uses qualitative and quantitative methods to profile petitions for mercy, highlighting controversial cases that stirred public debate. Political pressure to render the use of discretion more certain and less personal grew stronger over the nineteenth century, peaking during constitutional conventionsand reaching its height in the Progressive Era. Yet, New York’s legislators left the power to pardon in the governor’s hands, where it remains today. Unlike previous works that portray parole as the successor to the pardon, this book shows that reliance upon and faith in discretion has proven remarkably resilient, even in the state that led the world toward penal modernity.

Seneca Possessed
Seneca Possessed

Author: Matthew Dennis

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-02-23

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0812207084

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Seneca Possessed examines the ordeal of a Native people in the wake of the American Revolution. As part of the once-formidable Iroquois Six Nations in western New York, Senecas occupied a significant if ambivalent place within the newly established United States. They found themselves the object of missionaries' conversion efforts while also confronting land speculators, poachers, squatters, timber-cutters, and officials from state and federal governments. In response, Seneca communities sought to preserve their territories and culture amid a maelstrom of economic, social, religious, and political change. They succeeded through a remarkable course of cultural innovation and conservation, skillful calculation and luck, and the guidance of both a Native prophet and unusual Quakers. Through the prophecies of Handsome Lake and the message of Quaker missionaries, this process advanced fitfully, incorporating elements of Christianity and white society and economy, along with older Seneca ideas and practices. But cultural reinvention did not come easily. Episodes of Seneca witch-hunting reflected the wider crises the Senecas were experiencing. Ironically, as with so much of their experience in this period, such episodes also allowed for the preservation of Seneca sovereignty, as in the case of Tommy Jemmy, a Seneca chief tried by New York in 1821 for executing a Seneca "witch." Here Senecas improbably but successfully defended their right to self-government. Through the stories of Tommy Jemmy, Handsome Lake, and others, Seneca Possessed explores how the Seneca people and their homeland were "possessed"—culturally, spiritually, materially, and legally—in the era of early American independence.