Moral contagion : black Atlantic sailors, citizenship, and diplomacy in antebellum America /
"Between 1822 and 1857, eight Southern states barred the ingress of all free black maritime workers. According to lawmakers, they carried a "moral contagion" of abolitionism and black autonomy that could be transmitted to local slaves. Those seamen who arrived in Southern ports in vio...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY :
Cambridge University Press,
2019.
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| Series: | Studies in legal history.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "Between 1822 and 1857, eight Southern states barred the ingress of all free black maritime workers. According to lawmakers, they carried a "moral contagion" of abolitionism and black autonomy that could be transmitted to local slaves. Those seamen who arrived in Southern ports in violation of the laws faced incarceration, corporal punishment, an incipient form of convict leasing, and even punitive enslavement. The sailors, their captains, abolitionists, and British diplomatic agents protested this treatment. They wrote letters, published tracts, cajoled elected officials, pleaded with Southern officials, and litigated in state and federal courts. By deploying a progressive and sweeping notion of national citizenship - one that guaranteed a number of rights against state regulation - they exposed the ambiguity and potential power of national citizenship as a legal category. Ultimately, the Fourteenth Amendment recognized the robust understanding of citizenship championed by antebellum free people of color, by people afflicted with "moral contagion.""-- |
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| Item Description: | Based on author's thesis (doctoral - University of Florida, 2010) issued under title: Navigating the dangerous Atlantic : black sailors, racial quarantines, and U.S. constitutionalism. |
| Physical Description: | xiii, 252 pages ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-245) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781108469999 110846999X 9781108455121 1108455123 |