The People and Their Peace

“Proposes an alternative view of the Early National period, one based on records that most historians still do not use. . . . Well worth reading.” — Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“An authoritative study on the legal culture of the plantation South. . . . A great book! Highly recommended.” — CHOICE

“Provides a richly textured portrait of a legal culture in which women, African Americans, and the poor played an important part. . . . Offers an important contribution to the literature on the history of the South.” — H-Net Reviews

“The author’s prodigious research in the extant legal records of the Carolinas as well as the challenging interpretations that emerge from this research are the study’s great strengths. . . . Where this study succeeds is in its sophisticated analysis of a broad range of records that reveal important insights about ordinary people and their place in the early nineteenth century.” — The Journal of American History

“An outstanding and groundbreaking study, one that will in all likelihood change the way scholars look at the law in the southern states for some time to come.” — North Carolina Historical Review

“This book is destined to be a crucial work in American legal history, but its impact on other fields may be just as great.” — American Historical Review

“An important and profound reexamination of the legal culture of the 1789-1840 era. . . . Edwards’s arguments are convincing and enlightening. . . . A seminal work that should stimulate further work and a new school of interpretation of American history.” — H-Net Reviews

“Offers provocative new insights into nineteenth-century southern society. . . . Scholars of slavery, the Old South, and late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century U.S. law ignore it at their peril.” — Georgia Historical Quarterly

“Based on deep research in local and appellate court records, statutes, and the papers of jurists. . . . Edwards' efforts to chart a new legal history of the South are admirable and her research is impressive.” — Journal of Southern History

“Bold and deeply impressive. . . . Surely one of the very finest books ever written on antebellum legal history. It looks to important and neglected sources, is a very sophisticated study, and will repay multiple readings. Its bold thesis will keep scholars busy in the archives, rethinking our own work and generating new insights for decades.” — Journal of American Ethnic History