A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights

ISBN-13: 9781107008793 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 226 str.

Laura F. Edwards

Opis

Although hundreds of thousands of people died fighting in the American Civil War, perhaps the war's biggest casualty was the nation's legal order. A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction explores the implications of this major change by bringing legal history into dialogue with the scholarship of other historical fields. Federal policy on slavery and race, particularly the three Reconstruction amendments, are the best-known legal innovations of the era. Change, however, permeated all levels of the legal system, altering Americans' relationship to the law and allowing them to move popular conceptions of justice into the ambit of government policy. The results linked Americans to the nation through individual rights, which were extended to more people and, as a result of new claims, were reimagined to cover a wider array of issues. But rights had limits in what they could accomplish, particularly when it came to the collective goals that so many ordinary Americans advocated.

Recenzje

'Edwards deftly incorporates historical information about the impacts of the legal changes of this era on many segments of the US population. Moving beyond a traditional emphasis on the social categories of white and black, the author provides valuable context about the impacts of the era's legal changes on women in general (both black and white), workers in the expanding industrial sector, and Native Americans. Edwards also offers her readers an alternative to the dominant North-South 'axis' of the historiography of Reconstruction … Any library that collects in the areas of legal history, constitutional history, or civil rights would be well served by the addition of this title.' Jennifer L. Laws, Law Library Journal

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. The United States and its use of the people; 2. The Confederacy and its legal contradictions; 3. Enslaved Americans, emancipation, and the future legal order; 4. The federal government and the reconstruction of the legal order; 5. The possibilities of rights; 6. The power of law and the limits of rights; 7. Conclusion.