Transcripts For CSPAN3 Reconstruction Era Rights 20151115 :

I just want to express my great appreciation for the Supreme Court Historical Society and for all of the rest of the associates here who do so much for the court. This year is the 2015 leon silverman lecture series. Lecture series like these are an important part of what goes on at the court. But they are only a small part of what the Supreme Court Historical Society does. The Supreme Court Historical Society puts out a regular journal, it collects items relating to the courts history, which really are all around the court, a lot of the offices and the portraits are a result of the societys collecting efforts. There are a lot of programs for School Teachers to make sure that School Teachers know how to teach about the court and about the american constitution and altogether, it is just a great support for the court and for the justices. It is a great liaison between the court and the outside world. You knowgrateful to the rest of the people who make society work. And by making this society work you help to make the court work. Talk is called the reconstruction of rights. Professor edwards is a peabody atily professor of History Duke University where she specializes in womens history and the history of the south in the 19th century. Professor edwards earned a phd in history from the university of North Carolina. She is the author of the legal history of the civil war and reconstruction. It was published just this year. Book was awarded the griswold prize. Scarletworks include doesnt live here anymore and confusion,rife and the political culture of reconstruction. Can i said i like the title . The best. Honored withbeen the Howard Johnson award for distinguished undergraduate teaching given by duke university. She served as the Southern Association for women historians memberthe number of the executive board of the Southern Historical association. I could continue with a long list of her other compliments but maybe more interesting is to hear her talk about the other amendments. And be more interesting is to hear her talk. [applause] thank you, it is really lovely to be here. In 1870, the africanamerican woman did something that she could not have done when she was enslaved. She talked for her rights. She had a problem with beatty armstrong, a landowner who was also her employer. And she expressed her form of anger in a form common in the south. Highly verbalize drawing attention to the situation and shame the intended target. As for son put it later, his mom was talking loud. She said she was talking for her rights and she would as much as she pleased and as loud as she pleased. Armstrong issued a threat. She did not stop, he would make her stop. When she continued his trucker in the face and broke a piece of her tooth and stopped her. Or so he thought will stop she used his actions to file charges against him. I discovered that the best evidence often turns up in this way. Usually refuses to offer the evidence that i want. Fear i have passed by many important findings because i have no idea what to do with them. Occasionally a piece of evidence next to stop and take note. Thats what was happening with. Er case i have it upside down. Case because you thought it provided a particularly compelling example of something i already knew. The constitutional changes at the creek and reconstruction era opened it to africanamericans. Maria mitchell had writes in 1870 that she did not have before and she was claiming them. She had them because of passages of the amendments with provided federal protection of civil rights, among other things, prohibiting states from discriminating on the basis of race. She said she was talking for her rights and what is loud as she pleased which underscored these changes in a way that was hard to miss. I thought i had it figured out, but i didnt. My initial interpretation of security much larger story. In the context of legal matters that most of us would consider unremarkable, not constitutional. Story was thes documentation of cases like Maria Mitchell. Sources, not published they are appellate cases and legal treaties that most associate with history. Some are reduced by circuit courts which met in a regular schedule in court towns which held jury trials. Most interesting childs like this one were produced by magistrates. They set up court where they were, taking time out of their day issue complaints, adjudicate, and send these issues through the legal system. The people involved took an active part in the process. Collecting evidence, providing information, and you actually see the context in these documents. The handwriting is by officials with pen in hand. Than most ofneater them. The names are those of the were hashing out lifes problems and you can even hear these people talking if you say the words out loud all stop you of some frenchs, some german, some irish and certainly the creel cadences that marked the speech of so many cases of african descent. If you keep looking, you can see the law as it worked in daily lives. Systemrt of the legal was charged with maintaining public order. Or keeping the peace. Issues that included all but the most criminal cases as well as a broad issue. The expectation was officials which it adjudicate conflict in the community dealing with what was right. Not everyoneously agreed and not everyones opinion carried equal weight. This framework was not just it was characterized the operation of law in those reports throughout the United States. It was the Legal Framework most familiar to americans in the 19th century. Once those cases were concluded, the documents weres folded thirds, tied in a ribbon and forgotten. So was the legal context that produced these documents. This was actually one that had been folded in thirds than unfolded and steamed open. It is hard to imagine this legal where people are doing what they thought was right had anything to do with the 14th amendment. But it did. Fair warning. I will take you on a journey to places that are strange. Places like edgecomb county North Carolina and the venues of local magistrates. I promise i will get you back to familiar terrain, washington, dc and the u. S. Constitution all stop but hopefully it will render these familiar places a little less familiar. To tell the story i must first talk about the legal system and the two different systems offered. Once focused on individual rights, and the other on maintaining public order and doing what was right at the local level. They both mattered. Then i explore what happened after the passage of the 14th amendment which properties Legal Frameworks together and encouraged americans to see federal authority as a protection of both rights and what was right. Predatess revolution the rights revolution of the 20th century. Was not just ordinary americans who transformed rights and the reach of federal authority. A much wider array of issues that have been the case before the passage of the 14th amendment. That was not necessarily the intention, but it was the rueful result. Enduringofound and allowing citations what rights and hetero authority can compass. It seemed obvious. She was claiming rights that other american citizens had. And denied her estate law until the federal government interceded. When i returned after writing a book and legal culture, her claim struck me as odd. For that bookh that made me come to terms with what local record said about the structure of the law in this part of the legal system. Ever, and voteif the rights in the context of criminal cases and local courts. That was because local courts did not use the framework to adjudicate those cases, or for that matter, any of the matters in public order. Putting criminal matters in a wide variety of issues. Most americans, including those outside the south would have been familiar with the operation of law within this legal system because the tight central roles in the proceedings. Americans, i really do mean most americans, even the enslaved. Given that context, mitchell must have known that rights have little power in local venues. So for her to be talking about rights, rights she could claim in a criminal case, missed the mark. So what did she mean . Catch of that question we need to explore the legal system of the early 19th century. Before we do that we need to know to bring things in the early 19th century that are different from the situation today. Legal authorities is a federal government and state was limited. Be later, but not now. The federal government was a distant entity for most people. Military service, military pensions, the campaigns for federal office, and prosaically, the postal service. People are more likely to encounter the Legal Authority of state. States protected the rights of individuals in the tour responsible for maintaining public order all stop but they delegated significant power to counties and in its appellate to and matters involving the maintenance of public order. Was being done right. That situation dates the revolution. Their decentralized the most important question of government. In the name of much that was done and legal venues earlier to circuit courts. Such as magistrates, hearings and trials. These really are part of the fabric of peoples lives. They convene wherever there was sufficient space. It was even true for circuit courts in the first decade of the 19th century when many counties lacked the formal court houses that would later house these courts. Here we have nichols mill which is the forced first courthouse in spartanburg. And today we say a mill, that is so quaint. But that is not really a legal forum. But it was. And we need to take this as a legal forum as a document for what the law meant in peoples lives. The next thing you need to know is that rights in the early 19th century were not what they are today. But i use the term rights im referring merely to those rights at the time which were thought to be conferred by government, which were available to individuals. That is free white men, particularly those with property. Rightsondarily, natural which belong to everyone, in theory, and cannot be infringed by government, in theory. Natural rights were also connected to civil and Political Rights in the sense that those who could claim civil and Political Rights had stronger claims to natural rights than those who did not, such as married women and the enslaved. Property ownership was inseparable in the early 19th century. Property requirements for suffrage had only recently been eliminated at the time of the civil war. Offices inor some some states were still restricted on the basis of property. In civil rights also involved Property Ownership, accumulation and exchange. Authority over the Legal Framework of individual rights lay with state and federal jurisdictions. Courts in turn generally followed state laws and matters leading to rights, unlike situations relating to matters of public order. Authority over rights did not mean that they exercised extensive authority over peoples lives. The Quentin Bryce with freedom, liberty and social equality which would suggest otherwise. Know, political rhetoric does not always describe reality. They were very limited ands within the political system. The americans who could claim the more a minority. These were among individuals by identifying winners and losers. Were and federal courts committed to the preparation preservation of rights as such. Not to be concerned with individuals who brother problems to the court for adjudication. So it produced outcomes of questionable justice, at least according to the standards of many americans. Convictions overturned because of an improperly framed indictment or seizure of property because of a faulty bill of sale. More often than not they tended to preserve inequalities because they tended to involve Property Ownership and economic exchange. Situation also explains the 19th century stereotype of lawyers and parasites, who exploited rules to process on the profit on the misfortune of others. So what about the u. S. Constitutions bill of rights and similar provisions in state constitutions . The u. S. S in constitution only applied in federal cases which meant they were not available to state and local matters. Rightscould reach for enumerated in their state constitutions, the fact that they also had broad powers to regulate the name of the public good made them contingent and not absolute. Localtates and governments exercised wide latitude in limiting or suspending rights in the name of the public good. They recognized even more because they had so much more to the local level. Assume that law was designed from ehrlich at the federal level and the state levels and that it was primarily concerned with the framework of individual rights you have a very partial view of the law in the first half of the 19th century. You would think for instance that the majority of americans who could not claim those rights were all excluded from the legal system. You would also find a legal matters of the local level that was supposed to do what was right to be utterly unintelligible or unimaginable like this one which involved where two slaves are stealing from another slave. And yet get these cases at the local level. Most scholars look to fate and Sterile State and federal jurisdictions to explain the law in most americans experience with the law was at the local level. Maintain the peace of the southern border. Order ofsed the ideal the metaphorical public body. Subordinating everyone within a hierarchical system. Only innclusive, but the sense that it enforced everyone in the patriarchal embrace and raise those over any a any given individual. You are part of it whether you wanted to be there or not. So keeping the peace meant keeping everyone from the lowest to the highest in their appropriate places. This was actually about coercion. Not localized system did recognize the rights of free women or free blacks. It still incorporated them into its basic workings. Maintained their subordination and regulated their behavior but also relied on information they supplied. Take for example two cases initiated by slaves. One slave complained that a free black men have been playing cards with another slave on sunday. Another complained that the same free lack meant assaulted one of those slaves after the card game. That another complaint probably could be filed. That was not mentioned technically these slaves gave information. In putting the because laws prohibited all slaves from filing complaints. The magistrate proceeded based on that information so it was the magistrate who acted as the prosecutors they had their own reasons for what they did reasons that we no longer know but perhaps involve the proceedings they got from the card game and other issues that remain lost in history. In the magistrates concern were likely more centered on the disorder caused by slaves and free blacks gaming, drinking and fighting on a sunday. As such, the cases illustrate central elements of this part of the legal system. Different people pursued. Ifferent ends within it it was possible because it depended on the participation of every member of the local community. They gathered witnesses and represented themselves. The definition of interest here whichry broad and varied should not surprise those of you who grew up in small towns. It was not unusual for witness, after witness, after witness to tell what they knew. His situation that magisters bore patiently. Knowing that it was also about healing a rift in the community. That is why Court Officials also prosecuted cases on behalf of individuals without legal status to do so themselves. Such as the two slaves a just mentioned, but also married women and minors. The cases that did not exist in this reload such as violence against slaves, child abuse keenly leapt forward. Things that were wrong and not outt local courts meted justice on a casebycase basis to write those wrongs not to maintain individual rights or even to establish precedents that others could claim. Some regarding rights in procedural respects, decisions claimed light on commonlaw in the traditional sense. Local customs, how we do things here. Accepted wisdom. The bible, fables, fiction, the wisdom of somebodys grandmother, the kind told with a hand on the hip and a finger in your face. As well as an array of legal tests. The law in this part of the system was capacious and uncontrolled by professionals and thus skull to reform by many trained lawyers who saw to limit texts cited in court to those recognized by state law. When you read these calls for reform you can sit and wonder what are they thinking . It is because they are bringing all of these other materials into legal cases that makes this necessary. The legal cases used allowed for the handling situations that would not have had Good Standing in state or federal court. Masters filed charges against slaves they could not control. Charges against her husbands. Children informed on their parents. Even slaves tried to mobilize. Aunts, uncles, and cousins lining up to air their dirty laundry. One of my favorite cases involves three wives and a goose. Filed charges against wife three for stealing her goose. Wife three insisted she did not steal it, but had not the goose from wife two, which would make her the thief. None of these women could prosecute a case, let alone own or sell kees because of coverture, which ensued the legal abilities with those of their home husbands and limited their ability to prosecute cases over property. But they were operated by property cases by federal law that did not apply in this case. The magistrate prosecuted to clay case based on the information of the wives. The goose went back to its original owner, wife one. Not because the court recognized her property rights, but because that was where it belonged. When order when that happened, people expected the court to write the wrong. Decision is profoundly situational. One persons experience to that transfer to another person of status. Each jurisdiction produced inconsistent rulings and get resolving particular matters. People saw the situation is natural and just. We today would see it as unnatural and unjust. But it made sense at the time. Why impose ar