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Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860. By THOMAS D. MORRIS. Studies in Legal History. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. x, 575 pp. $49.95.
THOMAS D. MORRIS has written a comprehensive account of the development of the law of slavery in America from the colonial period to the Civil War. He looks beyond the antebellum abolitionists and proslavery interpretations of the law of slavery and its sources. Nor does he only describe a "slave code" merely by looking at those statutes that expressly pertained to slavery. He studies law as it was practiced in the courts. Most laws regarding slaves were aspects of property law. Cases dealt with such matters as inheritance disputes or the collection of debt. The origin of this kind of law, except in Louisiana, was the common law. Morris shows that the law of slavery changed through time and differed in the various colonies, then states. He also deals with the potential conflict between the law...