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"Manumission"
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Standard-bearers of equality : America's first abolition movement
\"Paul Polgar recovers the racially inclusive vision of America's first abolition movement. In showcasing the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the New York Manumission Society, and their African American allies during the post-Revolutionary and early national eras, he unearths this coalition's comprehensive agenda for black freedom and equality\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Apprenticeship System in the Caribbean
Abstract
Slavery was abolished in the Anglophone Caribbean on August 1, 1834. On that date, the enslaved became legally free. However, the freedom of the enslaved was heavily circumscribed by the Apprenticeship system which followed immediately after August 1. Under the terms of this system, former slaves-now called apprentices-were required to work up to 45 hours per week for their former masters without compensation. Apprentices resisted the system at its outset; subsequently, they attempted to assert their rights as much as possible during the Apprenticeship period, even in the face of a highly oppressive system. Yet, like the enslaved, apprentices have left very little direct evidence in the form of letters or diaries. But because of their appearances before the stipendiary magistrates and in the reports generated about the Apprenticeship system, we can recreate aspects of their world and understand how apprentices sought to take advantage of Apprenticeship for their own benefit.
Journal Article
Essentials. Documents and law. The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, an Executive Order issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, shifted the focus of the Civil War to preserve the Union and end slavery in rebellious states.
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The Creation of a Crusader
The story of one Ohio senator's impact on the early abolition movement More than 175 years after his death, Senator Thomas Morris has remained one of the few early national champions of political and constitutional antislavery without a biography devoted to him.In this first expansive study of Morris's life and contributions, David C.
eBook
Freedom in Marriage? Manumission for Marriage in the Roman World
This article examines marriage as a pathway to free status for enslaved women in the early imperial Roman world, arguing that women manumitted for marriage to their former owners experienced a qualified form of freedom. Analysis of a funerary altar from early imperial Rome alongside larger bodies of legal and epigraphic evidence shows that in this transactional mode of manumission, enslaved women paid for their freedom by foregoing certain privileges, including, to varying degrees, the ability to enter and exit the marriage at will and the separation of their property from that of their husbands. Through a close examination of one mode of manumission and the unequal unions that resulted from it, this paper offers further evidence that freedom was not uniform, but varied in its meaning depending on who achieved it and by what means.
Journal Article
The Precarious Inheritance Rights of Adopted Slaves During the Old Babylonian Period
Adoptions during the Old Babylonian period were driven by various social, economic, and legal motivations. In the case of adoptions of slaves, it automatically resulted in their manumission, granting them a new status as “son and heir” along with associated rights – mostly inheritance ones – and duties. Thus, adoption-manumissions transformed slaves into freed heirs. However, while laws clearly protected the inheritance rights of freeborn children, the legal situation of these freed adoptees has yet not been fully explored. By examining a corpus of 10 documents, this paper shows that the situation of freed heirs was precarious when compared with free heirs. On the one hand, their former status as slaves meant that adoption-manumission contracts included provisions for their (re-)enslavement in the event of a contractual breach. On the other hand, no specific legal regime governed and protected their inheritance rights, which were therefore entirely contingent on the contract drafted by the adopters. As a result, the fate of adopted slaves was at the mercy of their adopters. This study reveals that the inheritance rights of freed heirs were often inferior to those of free heirs. This was due to the ability of parents to add ancillary clauses to the adoption-manumission contracts to favor preexisting free heirs. However, adopters could also insert protective clauses to secure the inheritance rights of freed heirs, especially in competition with future free heirs. Through a new reading of texts concerning adopted slaves, this paper outlines for the first time their inheritance rights, highlighting the complexity and flexibility of Mesopotamian law.
Journal Article
The Hoax of Semi-Freedom in Babylonia
This article maintains that the term “semi-free” for describing the personal status of individuals and population groups in ancient Mesopotamia is overused and underexplained. As long as this label is attached to any non-slave who happens to be burdened with duties of whatever kind, it remains a hollow cliché. It was the free, non-slave individual who was subjected to taxes and corvée, even if he was of high social standing. Declaring dependent groups, such as non-priestly temple personnel or foreign deportees settled on royal land, to be “semi-free,” despite being qualified to own and bequeath property, live in families, and perform state duties, limits the number of “really free” individuals considerably, basically, to male heads of wealthy households and noble descent only. Even their sons, wives, and daughters experienced diminished freedom of whatever fraction one wishes to choose – even more so their underlings and the dependents of state and temple households. Manumission records are the key to our understanding of personal status, as they spell out the steps necessary for status change and, thereby, the features pertaining to these steps. Relying on the Neo-Babylonian archives, this article distinguishes between several types of manumission, specifically the redemption and oblation type. Based on insights into the mechanics of these procedures, this article argues that the place of an individual within a household and his relation to the head of this household were additional parameters, besides the legal status (slave vs. non-slave), that defined his social standing.
Journal Article
The Escribano of Babel: Power, Exile, and Enslavement in the Venezuelan Llanos During the War of Independence (1806–1833)
This article traces the professional life of Rafael Almarza, the last royal escribano (notary) of Mérida in the captaincy of Venezuela, and his role in undermining monarchical authority among the enslaved community displaced in the plains region (Los Llanos) during the war of independence in 1814-18. Despite their status as minor officials within the Spanish imperial bureaucracy, notaries, through the records they made, helped to establish legally binding truths underlying everyday actions, making them influential agents of colonial rule in the community they served, particularly among those seeking notarial documents to obtain freedom. During the battles for independence, escribanos like Almarza facilitated the transition of sovereignty and created documents that fomented the independence cause among enslaved individuals during the years of total war. By examining the manumission documents found in the notarial book Almarza kept during exile, the author of this article shows the importance of enslaved people in granting legitimacy to the emerging leadership of José Antonio Páez and the Republican project. At the same time, this study aims to provide a new look at manumission during the early stages of nation-building and the involvement of underrepresented groups in this process.
Journal Article
Early African Caribbean Newspapers As Archipelagic Media in the Emancipation Age
This book sheds light on the archipelagic relations of two African Caribbean newspapers in the early decades of the nineteenth century and analyzes their medium-specific interventions in the struggle for emancipation and on a white-dominated communication market.
eBook