Slavery Law

Primary Legal Sources

Bill SchwesigBibliographer for Common LawD’Angelo Law Library

Published as

Slip laws/pamphlets Session laws Statutes at large Codified laws

Statutes

LexisNexisLaws in force, with case annotations

Hein OnlineFederal and State Session LawsIncludes colonial and territorial laws

LLMC DigitalMainly session laws

Making of Modern Law: Primary SourcesCompilations of laws, municipal ordinances, constitutional conventions

Statute Sources

State slavery statutes UPA Academic Editions, c1989. Microfiche with print guide.

microfcXXKF4545.S5A3 1989 D'Angelo Law, Microforms

Paul Finkelman (ed.), Statutes on slavery : the pamphlet literature. Garland (1988) XXKF4545.S5A50 1988 ser.7 Regenstein Bookstacks, D'Angelo Bookstacks

Slavery Statute Compilations

Supreme Court Lower Appellate Courts Names vary: Court of Appeal, Court of Errors

LexisNexis LLMC Digital state reports, Federal Cases D’Angelo Law Library Annex Scan and Deliver

Courts of Record

Volume + reporter + page + court* + year Sanders v. Ward, 25 Ga. 109 (1858)

[State’s name alone means highest appellate court.]

Early US Supreme Court cases include citations to US Reports and original nominative reports.

Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393; 19 How. 393 (1857)

The citations in very old sources are to nominate reports that are now cited as volumes of Alabama Reports, Tennessee Reports, etc. Suggestion: Search by Case Name on LexisNexis

Legal Citations

LexisNexis is useful Digests are not very useful

Legal issue may involve slavery per se

Secondary Sources and collections Paul Finkelman, Slavery in the courtroom : an annotated bibliography

of American cases. Library of Congress (1985) / by Paul Finkelman. XXKF4545.S5A1230 1985 D'Angelo Bookstacks, Regenstein Bookstacks

Jacob D. Wheeler, A practical treatise on the law of slavery. (1837) Available as an ebook.

Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926

Finding Cases

Slavery, race, and the American legal system, 1700-1872, edited by Paul Finkelman Contents: I. Southern Slaves in Free State Courts; II. Fugitive Slaves and American Courts; III. Abolitionists in Northern Courts; IV. Statutes on Slavery; V. Free Blacks, Slaves and Slave-owners in Civil and Criminal Courts; VI. The African Slave Trade and American Courts; VII. Slave Rebels, Abolitionists and Southern Courts.

XXKF4545.S5A50 1988 D’Angelo Bookstacks, Regenstein Bookstacks

Slavery Case Law Collections

Superior Courts County and Municipal Courts Law and Chancery

Trial Courts

Complaint or indictment Docket sheet Motions Orders Final order or memorandum of opinion Verbatim transcript Many/all documents filed electronically Closed cases transferred to records facility or archive

Modern Trial Records

Limited records Dockets Minutes Case name indexes

Located at State Archives

Not all records survive

Historical Court Records

Appellate cases Published trials

Making of Modern Law: TrialsHein Online World Trial Library

News accounts Court record indexes

State Archives finding aidsAncestry Library EditionFamilySearch.com

Identifying trial level cases

Library of Congress Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 From Slavery to Freedom … 1822-1909 Slavery Resource Guide

Yale Libraries Slavery and Abolition Portal Researching Race in the American Trials Collection

Digital Collections

Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.

Did not emancipate slaves that had already been brought into the territory.

Map

Slavery in Illinois

Allowed indentured servitude (as criminal sentence) and slave labor in mines

1840 Census still listed slaves in Illinois Constitution of 1848 abolished slavery in Illinois, but did

not give equal civil rights to blacks

Constitution of 1870 eliminated all Constitutional legal disabilities of blacks

Illinois Constitution of 1818

Since 1813, the Illinois Territory excluded free Negroes. 1813 [Ill Terr Laws 17]

The State’s First Black Law was passed at the first session of the General Assembly [1819 Ill Laws 354]

Blacks without a certificate of freedom were deemed runaway slaves, and forbidden to enter the state.

A more severe Black Law was enacted in 1853, forbidding blacks from another state to remain in the state for more than 10 days. [1853 Ill Laws 57]

Illinois Black Codes (illustrated article) Repealed in 1865, after the ratification of the 14th

Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Black Codes

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Colonization movement Dred Scott Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Illinois State Archives: Illinois Servitude and Emancipation Records (1722–1863)

Later Developments

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