Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion

This book explores the processes by which Virginia was transformed from a British colony into a Southern slave state.

Christopher Michael Curtis (Author)

9781107017405, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 April 2012

270 pages
24.1 x 16.1 x 2.4 cm, 0.59 kg

'In his doggedly intelligent study of the legal culture of possession in late colonial and antebellum Virginia, Christopher Michael Curtis shows that the abundance of scholarship on Thomas Jefferson has a point beyond the hagiographic: Jefferson remains an important point of departure for understanding the early south.' Christopher Tomlins, Journal of Southern History

Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion explores the historical processes by which Virginia was transformed from a British colony into a Southern slave state. It focuses on changing conceptualizations of ownership and emphasizes the persistent influence of the English common law on Virginia's postcolonial political culture. The book explains how the traditional characteristics of land tenure became subverted by the dynamic contractual relations of a commercial economy and assesses the political consequences of the law reforms that were necessitated by these developments. Nineteenth-century reforms seeking to reconcile the common law with modern commercial practices embraced new democratic expressions about the economic and political power of labor, and thereby encouraged the idea that slavery was an essential element in sustaining republican government in Virginia. By the 1850s, the ownership of human property had replaced the ownership of land as the distinguishing basis for political power, with tragic consequences for the Old Dominion.

1. Introduction: the tragedy of ownership
Part I. Renovatio: 2. Taking notice of an error
3. The chosen people of God
Part II. Reformatio: 4. An invidious and anti-Republican test
5. Can these be the sons of their fathers?
6. Doubt seems to have arisen
7. A new system of jurisprudence
Part III. Conclusion: Reaction.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]