Ok, back to Hall, Finkelman, & Ely. In The
People & Their Peace, Laura Edwards argues that a customary law of
slavery emerged alongside and at times in defiance of the written law. One of her most arresting examples is the
case of Jesse Ruffin, a slave who leaves his plantation for days on end, makes
his own money, buys liquor, and visits friends – all in violation of both his
master’s wishes and written law. A
remarkable story in its own right, Jesse Ruffin happens to be owned by Thomas
Ruffin, the author of State v. Mann
(1829). For those of you who don’t know, Mann is infamous for the line that “[t]he power of the master must
be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect,” a declaration that
has won it a place in several primary source compendiums on slavery, including
HFE. However, HFE makes no mention of
Edwards in its note on Mann. Perhaps it should. Alternately, why not include one of the local
cases that Edwards describes, showing how the customary law of slavery yielded
unpredictable results?
Moving to the Civil War, almost the entire HFE section on
the war focuses on rights: first the rights of slave-owners to retrieve
runaways, then the rights of slaves in free territories, then the right to
secede, then emancipation and Reconstruction, and finally the denial of rights
during Redemption. However, there is a
structural aspect to the war that did not involve rights, per se, but still
warrants attention. As Heather Cox
Richardson demonstrates in The GreatestNation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), the Civil War prompted a dramatic
expansion of federal power, including the creation of a national currency, the
enactment of federal banking law, and the imposition of a federal income
tax. At least some of these developments
warrant mention, arguably more so than both Inaugural Addresses of Abraham
Lincoln, which are included in the collection.
Why not cut one address and include something on national currency? Paul?
Jim?
