From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation

ISBN-13: 9780521635264 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 294 str.

Amy Dru Stanley (University of Chicago)

Opis

This book explores the centrality of contract to debates over freedom and slavery in nineteenth-century America. It focuses on the contracts of wage labor and marriage, investigating the connections between abolition in the South and industrial capitalism in the North and linking labor relations to home life. Integrating the fields of gender and legal, intellectual and social history, it reveals how abolitionists, former slaves, feminists, laborers, lawmakers and others drew on contract to condemn chattel slavery and to measure the virtues of free society.

Recenzje

"...excellent and provocative study...

Spis treści

Preface; 1. Legends of contract freedom; 2. Merchants of time: the labor question and the sale of self; 3. "Beggars can't be choosers"; 4. The testing ground of home life; 5. Wage labor and marriage bonds; 6. The purchase of women; Afterword.