Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores
Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores

Author: Elaine Forman Crane

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-10-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0801462746

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The early American legal system permeated the lives of colonists and reflected their sense of what was right and wrong, honorable and dishonorable, moral and immoral. In a compelling book full of the extraordinary stories of ordinary people, Elaine Forman Crane reveals the ways in which early Americans clashed with or conformed to the social norms established by the law. As trials throughout the country reveal, alleged malefactors such as witches, wife beaters, and whores, as well as debtors, rapists, and fornicators, were as much a part of the social landscape as farmers, merchants, and ministers. Ordinary people "made" law by establishing and enforcing informal rules of conduct. Codified by a handshake or over a mug of ale, such agreements became custom and custom became "law." Furthermore, by submitting to formal laws initiated from above, common folk legitimized a government that depended on popular consent to rule with authority. In this book we meet Marretie Joris, a New Amsterdam entrepreneur who sues Gabriel de Haes for calling her a whore; peer cautiously at Christian Stevenson, a Bermudian witch as bad "as any in the world;" and learn that Hannah Dyre feared to be alone with her husband—and subsequently died after a beating. We travel with Comfort Taylor as she crosses Narragansett Bay with Cuff, an enslaved ferry captain, whom she accuses of attempted rape, and watch as Samuel Banister pulls the trigger of a gun that kills the sheriff's deputy who tried to evict Banister from his home. And finally, we consider the promiscuous Marylanders Thomas Harris and Ann Goldsborough, who parented four illegitimate children, ran afoul of inheritance laws, and resolved matters only with the assistance of a ghost. Through the six trials she skillfully reconstructs here, Crane offers a surprising new look at how early American society defined and punished aberrant behavior, even as it defined itself through its legal system.

A History of American Law
A History of American Law

Author: Lawrence M. Friedman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-09-09

Total Pages: 865

ISBN-13: 0190070900

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Renowned legal historian Lawrence Friedman presents an accessible and authoritative history of American law from the colonial era to the present day. This fully revised fourth edition incorporates the latest research to bring this classic work into the twenty-first century. In addition to looking closely at timely issues like race relations, the book covers the changing configurations of commercial law, criminal law, family law, and the law of property. Friedman furthermore interrogates the vicissitudes of the legal profession and legal education. The underlying theory of this eminently readable book is that the law is the product of society. In this way, we can view the history of the legal system through a sociological prism as it has evolved over the years.

A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams
A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams

Author: David Waldstreicher

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 1118524292

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A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams presents a collection of original historiographic essays contributed by leading historians that cover diverse aspects of the lives and politics of John and John Quincy Adams and their spouses, Abigail and Louisa Catherine. Features contributions from top historians and Adams’ scholars Considers sub-topics of interest such as John Adams’ role in the late 18th-century demise of the Federalists, both Adams’ presidencies and efforts as diplomats, religion, and slavery Includes two chapters on Abigail Adams and one on Louisa Adams

Conceived in Crisis
Conceived in Crisis

Author: Christopher R. Pearl

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2020-08-06

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0813944554

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Conceived in Crisis argues that the American Revolution was not just the product of the Imperial Crisis, brought on by Parliament’s attempt to impose a new idea of empire on the American colonies. To an equal or greater degree, it was a response to the inability of individual colonial governments to deliver basic services, which undermined their legitimacy. Factional bickering over policy, violent extralegal regulations, and the dreadful experiences of conducting an imperial war while governing a demographically growing and geographically expanding population all led colonists and imperial officials to consider reforming the colonial governments into more powerful and coercive entities. Using Pennsylvania as a case study, Christopher Pearl demonstrates how this history of ineffective colonial governance precipitated a process of state formation that was accelerated by the demands of the Revolutionary War. The powerful state governments that resulted dominated the lives of ordinary people well into the nineteenth century. Conceived in Crisis makes sense of the trajectory from weak colonial to strong revolutionary states, and in so doing explains the limited success of efforts to consolidate state power at the national level during the early Republican period.

The Poison Plot
The Poison Plot

Author: Elaine Forman Crane

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 150172133X

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"Explores in colonial Newport, Rhode Island, the tumultuous marriage of Benedict and Mary Arnold in the 1720s and 1730s. In and through their sordid and possibly criminal marital story, in which Mary is accused of poisoning Benedict, Crane sheds light on the liabilities and possibilities for women under couverture, the complex social and economic networks that bound together the elite and laboring classes of Newport, and the trans-oceanic cultures of trade, consumption, and sociability that came to shape expectations for marital satisfaction on both sides of the Atlantic"--

Rethinking Rufus
Rethinking Rufus

Author: Thomas A. Foster

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2019-05-01

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0820355208

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Rethinking Rufus is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by enslaved women, with comparatively little attention paid to the stories of men. However, a careful reading of extant sources reveals that sexual assault of enslaved men also occurred systematically and in a wide variety of forms, including physical assault, sexual coercion, and other intimate violations. To tell the story of men such as Rufus—who was coerced into a sexual union with an enslaved woman, Rose, whose resistance of this union is widely celebrated—historian Thomas A. Foster interrogates a range of sources on slavery: early American newspapers, court records, enslavers’ journals, abolitionist literature, the testimony of formerly enslaved people collected in autobiographies and in interviews, and various forms of artistic representation. Foster’s sustained examination of how black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women makes an important contribution to our understanding of masculinity, sexuality, the lived experience of enslaved men, and the general power dynamics fostered by the institution of slavery. Rethinking Rufus illuminates how the conditions of slavery gave rise to a variety of forms of sexual assault and exploitation that affected all members of the community.

The Gap in God's Country
The Gap in God's Country

Author: Laurie M. Johnson

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2024-10-18

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1666796824

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Laurie M. Johnson argues that America’s culture wars may seem to have erupted in the past couple of decades, but they go back centuries. For those who think that Christian nationalism (or right-wing populism) is the problem to be solved, that some people simply need to understand Christianity or politics better and become reasonable, read on. Christian nationalism and other ideological extremes are symptoms of major economic, technological, spiritual, and psychological shifts that have left too many people uprooted, disenchanted, and precarious. There are no easy answers, but Johnson tries to show a path out that enlists not only individuals, but also church and state. Without leadership and structure provided at the levels of the church and state, Christians, and those impacted by them, will remain part of the problem and not the solution. Johnson says to Christians: change is not talk, it’s action, and Christian action can only happen with leadership that creates a context where we can work together, rather than wasting our time in culture wars.

Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750
Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750

Author: Abby Chandler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1317107802

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Having arriving in the Province of Maine in 1641 with a brief to create both government and law for the fledgling colony, Thomas Gorges later recorded his policy as having ’steared as neere as we could to the course of Ingland’. Over the course of the next century the various colonial administrations all consciously measured their laws against that of England, whether their intention was imitation of or conscious opposition to, established English legal system. In order to trace the shifting and contested relationships between colonial laws and English laws, this book focuses on the prosecution of sexual misconduct. All crimes can threaten orderly society but no other crime posed quite the same long term implications as illicit sex resulting in the birth of illegitimate children who became their own social challenges. Sexual misconduct was, consequently, a major concern for early modern leaders, making it a particularly fruitful subject for studying the complex relationship between laws in England and laws in the English colonies. Political and ecclesiastical leaders create laws to coerce people to behave in a certain fashion and to convey wider messages about the societies they govern. When those same laws are broken, lawbreakers must be tried and punished by a means intended to serve as a warning to other would-be lawbreakers. In this book the two-part analysis of changing sexual misconduct laws and the resulting trial depositions highlights the ways in which ordinary New England colonists across New England both interacted with and responded to the growing Anglicization of their legal systems and makes the argument that these men and women saw themselves as taking part in a much larger process.

Intimate Partner Violence in New Orleans
Intimate Partner Violence in New Orleans

Author: Ashley Baggett

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2017-10-13

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1496815246

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Ashley Baggett uncovers the voices of abused women who utilized the legal system in New Orleans to address their grievances from the antebellum era to the end of the nineteenth century. Poring over 26,000 records, Baggett analyzes 421 criminal cases involving intimate partner violence—physical or emotional abuse of a partner in a romantic relationship—revealing a significant demand among women, the community, and the courts for reform in the postbellum decades. Before the Civil War, some challenges and limits to the male privilege of chastisement existed, but the gendered power structure and the veil of privacy for families in the courts largely shielded abusers from criminal prosecution. However, the war upended gender expectations and increased female autonomy, leading to the demand for and brief recognition of women's right to be free from violence. Baggett demonstrates how postbellum decades offered a fleeting opportunity for change before the gender and racial expectations hardened with the rise of Jim Crow. Her findings reveal previously unseen dimensions of women's lives both inside and outside legal marriage and women's attempts to renegotiate power in relationships. Highlighting the lived experiences of these women, Baggett tracks how gender, race, and location worked together to define and redefine gender expectations and legal rights. Moreover, she demonstrates recognition of women's legal personhood as well as differences between northern and southern states' trajectories in response to intimate partner violence during the nineteenth century.