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This analysis investigates how private law obstructed emancipation efforts despite constitutional amendments.

Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law

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This analysis investigates how private law obstructed emancipation efforts despite constitutional amendments.
Examined roughly seven hundred southern appellate decisions
Analyzed the role of contract law in undermining the Thirteenth Amendment
Investigated the relationship between secession, abolition, and state sovereignty
Explored court decisions regarding marriage, inheritance, and criminal punishment for freedpeople
The analysis reveals private law continued to treat former slaves as property, affecting their rights
Judges prioritized continuity in contract law over the revolutionary ideals of the Reconstruction Amendments
The ruling in Hart v. White (1868) reinforced the legal preferences of commercial law over abolition
Individual cases illustrated the ongoing struggles of freedpeople to gain equal legal status after emancipation

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Analyses private law's role in undermining emancipation in the South, indicating systemic judicial failures.

Cory James Young (2026) studied this question.

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