Notes For:
Robert Cover, "Chapter Nine: Formal Assumptions of the Antislavery Forces" in Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process
, (Yale University Press: 1975).<note 1>
[*149] The legal literature of antislavery is of several sorts. One category, not discussed here in any detail, is that of descriptions of slave
codes and their administration. The purpose of these works was to use slave law as data, credible data, as to the realities of slavery. The first, and in many ways the best, of these works was George Stroud,
A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery, first published in 1827 (Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpiess) and reissued in 1856 (Philadelphia: H. Longstreth). The best known of this category of work was William Goodell, The
American Slave Code in Theory and Practise (New York. American and Foreign Antislavery Society, 1853). Two works that did not concern themselves exclusively with the law of slavery, have long sections using legal
materials as data for depicting slavery. Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery As It Is (New York: American Antislavery Society, 1839), a powerful and very influential work, and Harriet Beecher Stowe,
The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (Boston: J. P. Jewett, 1853), an attempt to document the general picture of slavery in the novel published the year before. A second category of antislavery legal work was that of legal
arguments on relatively circumscribed issues. These position papers or briefs abound, and range in size, from newspaper columns to books. A few notable examples are: Theodore Dwight Weld, The Powers of Congress Over
Slavery in the District of Columbia (New York: American Antislavery Society, 1838); [William Jay], 7he Creole Case and Mr. Webster's Despatch (New York. New York American, 1842); Samuel May, The Fugitive Slave
Law and Its Victims (New York: American Antislavery Society, 1856); American Antislavery Society, Fugitive Slave Bill, Its Hinory and Unconstitutionality (New York: W. Harned, 1850). This last is but one of a number of
pamphlets discussing the Fugitive Slave Act with regard to a particular case, in this instance that of James Hamlet. See also Robert Rantoul, "The Fugitive Slave Law," in Luther Hamilton, ed., Memoires, Speeches,
artd Writings of Robert Rantoitl (Boston: 1. P. Jewett & Co., 1854). A third category of works on legal issues is the "Constitution and slavery" problem. This literature is discussed below.
A fourth category, often connected to the third, is the literature on legal obligation and civil disobedience. I have discussed in the text only certain examples of thit
literature that (a) treat the issue of obligations of magistrates or jurors; (b) were reasonably widely read. Notable examples of works on disobedience that fail to meet the first condition are Henry David Thoreau, "Essay on
Civil Disobedience" and "Slavery in Massachusetts," both in Thoreau's Complete Works
(Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1929). There was allso a rich harvest of sermons on obedience and disobedience, many of which are discussed or named in Stanley Campbell, The Slave Catchers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), in his discussions of public opinion. Relatively neglected have been the academic, philosophical religious works on obligations by such notables as Francis Wayland. See Edward Madden, Civil Disobedience and Moral Law in Nineteenth Century American Philosophy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), for an account of these men and their works.
Still another category was that of diatribes against legal institutions or judges for their evil, class-ridden oppression of the downtrodden. These
works might use any of the sort of arguments found in other categories as grist for their mill. Richard Hildreth is my favorite of these authors. Richard Hildreth, Despotism in America
(Boston: J.P. Jewett & Co., 1854), and, by the same author, Atrocious Judges: Lives of Judges Infamous As Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression
(New York: Aubum, Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1856). See my review of this last work in 68 Columbia Law Review 1003 (1968). Also in this category is the delightful Theodore Parker, The Trial of Theodore Parker
(Boston, 1855). A final category of literature is that of reports and accounts of trials or arguments in particular cases. The category is too large for cataloging here. Many such titles have appeared or will appear in notes in this work.
