Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860

“Supports and takes exception to many of the traditional views regarding Southern slavery. By overlaying American slavery with Southern law, Morris provides us with valuable insight and analysis. This book will long be considered a classic for understanding Southern slavery and the social system in which it existed.” — Our State

“This fine book is now the standard work concerning the legal history of slavery in the United States.” — Journal of Southern History

“The fullest and most probing explication to date of the policies and practices of the 'laws' of slavery.” — Historian

“A valuable contribution to the historiography of southern law and to the historiography of the institution of slavery.” — Journal of the Early Republic

“Brimming with knowledge and insight about a horrific aspect of our legal culture that continues to affect us.” — Washington Post Book World

“Morris’s comprehensive investigation ranges from 17th-century Chesapeake to late antebellum Texas in considering sources of slave law, the role of race in its development, and relationships among slavery, capitalism, and the law. . . . Historians of slavery will find perceptive observations on violence by and against slaves, manumission, hiring out, and flight.” — CHOICE

“One of the most impressive and thoughtful volumes on slavery in the last twenty years.” — History: Reviews of New Books

“One of the most significant works on Southern slave law.” — Law and Politics Book Review

“Based upon extensive research in legal archives, much of it unpublished county court records from dozens of selected counties across the South, upon state statutes, and on hundreds of volumes of published appellate decisions not individually listed in a bibliography, which, as it is, takes up thirty-six pages, it is now required reading for any serious student of slavery in the American South.” — Civil War History

“This book is a tour de force. We have nothing as comprehensive and valuable in the literature of slavery and the law in the United States.” — American Historical Review