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Book examines overlooked legal system of Old South

History professor Laura Edwards shows ordinary people influenced legal system more than elite from 1787-1840

Sometimes, sifting through rarely examined documents can lead to a fascinating zag in the zigzag of historical research.

 

 

 For Duke University history professor Laura F. Edwards, the zag came in her discovery that slaves and women, not the ruling elite, held the most influence in the Old South's legal system during the half-century following the Revolutionary War.

 

 Through extensive archival research in North and South Carolina, Edwards discovered that from 1787-1840, ordinary people without normal rights -- including slaves, free blacks and white women -- influenced the region's legal system, as opposed to legal professionals and political leaders.

 

 This often neglected slice of American democracy is examined in Edwards' book, "The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South" (UNC Press, 2009).

 

 The 448-page book, released on paperback in September, was recently awarded the 2009 American Historical Association's Littleton-Griswold prize, given for the best book in any subject on the history of American law and society.

 

 In the "The People and Their Peace," Edwards recasts traditional narratives of legal and political change.

 

 "Sometimes a change in the weather announces itself. The skies darken, the wind shifts, lightning flashes, thunder rolls, and a downpour follows, washing away the dust, cleansing the air, and leaving the impression of dramatic change," Edwards writes in the book's introduction.

 

 "Other times, the thick, cloying summer humidity turns imperceptibly into a rain shower that seems inevitable in hindsight. The subject of ‘The People and Their Peace' is the societal equivalent of a silent summer rain shower: changes that eased themselves into the nation's history with so little notification that, once they had been established, it appeared as if things had always been that way."

 

 This intensely localized legal system sought to keep the peace by protecting the social order and its patriarchal hierarchies. To achieve this, legal decisions focused more on interpersonal relationships -- patriarchs and their dependants, such as slaves and women -- rather than upholding the premise of individual rights.

Preserving the order of the community took precedence over a strict definition of coverture, which established a husband's rights to a wife's property and considerable control over her life. In cases of wife-beating, local courts disciplined husbands who were known trouble-makers and whose actions were seen as particularly disruptive to community relations, according to the book.

Court officials also recognized the legitimacy of married women's claims to property, when that property was associated with the wives' families or known to be the product of their own labor. Local courts even relied on information provided by slaves when they knew those slaves and trusted their knowledge of the situation.

These practices, however, only worked in wives' favor if they fulfilled their roles as good wives, mothers, and community members. Those who did not experienced particularly harsh, brutal treatment in the local courts because of the way their actions disrupted the peace. Whether the courts upheld wives' claims or not, the cases centered on maintaining community order, not the rights of either wives or their husbands, Edwards notes.

Edwards also examines the major shift away from this legal system by 1830, as state leaders set in place a more centralized system that excluded people who were not specifically granted individual rights.

_ _ _ Other books by Edwards are "Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era," and "Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction." Her website is at http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/history/faculty/ledwards.