Early American Legal History (AS 100.274)
Department of History
Johns Hopkins University
Summer 2012, Term I
Sara Damiano
sdamian4@jhu.edu
Office Hours: TBD
Course Overview
This course provides an overview of key issues and episodes in early American legal history between
the start of European settlement and the era of the Civil War. We will investigate changing
understandings of governance and legal authority, focusing particularly on their relationship to the
conflicts of the Revolution and the Civil War. Additional topics include Native American and
European land claims, the regulation of family life, economic and commercial disputes, and the
legal regimes of race and slavery. Throughout, we will consider both authorities’ aims and the ways
in which individual men and women maneuvered within the legal system.
This course also offers a hands-on introduction to the ways in which historians use legal records and
other primary sources to study early American legal history. Students will learn to navigate several
published and online collections of primary sources and will analyze documents from these
collections several times during throughout the term.
Course Requirements and Grading
Participation and attendance (15%): Students are expected to attend all classes and to be active
participants in classroom discussion. Your participation grade will be based on the quality of your
contributions to discussion. Please read and think about the assigned readings prior to class.
Source work (10%): For designated course meetings, students will be to asked to explore a
collection of primary sources and to each select one document that is relevant the day’s topic. You
should bring a copy of your primary source to class, along with a one-paragraph typed summary of
its content and how it relates to the course material. On days on which source work is assigned,
several students will also be assigned give brief oral presentations of their chosen documents.
Essay 1 (20%): Due June 13 at the beginning of class
For the first essay, you will write a 4-6 page book review of either Anne Orthwood’s Bastard:
Sex and Law in Early America or Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell.
Essay 2 (25%): Due June 25 at the beginning of class
For the second essay, you will write a 4-6 page analysis of a primary source from one of the
source collections or databases that we have worked with during the term.
Final Exam (30%): June 29 in class
A study guide with possible questions will be distributed on June 22.
1
Readings
All readings for class meetings are available either on electronic reserves through the library website
or through links posted on the course’s Blackboard site. Students are required to bring these readings
to class, either as electronic or paper copies.
You are required to purchase one of the following books for use in Essay 1:
Elaine Forman Crane, Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell
or
John Ruston Pagan,Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early America
Schedule
Week 1
Wednesday May 30: Introduction
Friday June 1: The Law of Settlement
Richard Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting (1584)
John Winthrop, Reasons to Be Considered (1629)
Craig Yirush, “Claiming the New World: Empire, Law, and Indigenous Rights in the Mohegan
Case, 1704-1743”
Week 2
Monday June 4: Servitude and Slavery
Christopher Tomlins, “Early British America, 1585-1830: Freedom Bound”
Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs, ch. 4
Virginia Slave Laws
Wednesday June 6: Household Governance
Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers, Prologue
Cornelia Dayton, “Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century
New England Village”
Source Work: Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts
Select one court case that was tried in seventeenth-century Essex County.
Friday June 8: The Formalization of Law
John Murrin, “The Legal Transformation: The Bench and the Bar of Eighteenth-Century
Massachusetts”
Elaine Crane, Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores, ch. 5
Source Work: America’s Historical Imprints
Select one document published between 1725 and 1775 that pertains to law, legal procedure,
or a legal dispute.
2
Week 3:
Monday June 11: The American Revolution
Jack Greene, “The Origins of the American Revolution”
Source Work: Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776
Select one pamphlet concerning the colonial crisis.
Wednesday June 13: The Constitution and Bill of Rights
**Essay 1 due at the beginning of class**
Bernard Bailyn, “The Ideological Fulfillment of the American Revolution”
James Madison, The Federalist 10 (1787)
Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788)
Friday June 15: Law and the Market Revolution
Hendrik Hartog, “Pigs and Positivism”
William J. Novak, “Public Economy and the Well-Ordered Market: Law and Economic
Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America”
Source Work: LexisNexis Academic
Select one state-level court case from 1789-1865 that relates to economic activity.
Week 4:
Monday June 18: The Federal Courts
Marbury v. Madison (1803)
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831)
Wednesday June 20: Crime and Punishment
Louis P. Masur, Rites of Execution, ch. 3, 4
Source Work: America’s Historical Newspapers
Select one article from 1789-1865 that reflects debates surrounding capital punishment
and/or prisons.
Friday June 22: Slavery and Race in the Old South
Laura Edwards, “Law, Domestic Violence, and the Limits of Patriarchal Authority in the
Antebellum South”
Walter Johnson, “The Slave Rader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in
the 1850s”
Source Work: Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks: Petitions to Southern Legislatures and County Courts
Select one petition that sheds light on slaves’ or free blacks’ relationship to the law.
3
Week 5:
Monday June 25: Sectional Conflict and the Civil War
**Essay 2 due at the beginning of class**
Dred Scott v Sanford (1857)
Selected newspaper responses to the Supreme Court’s decision
Wednesday June 27: Reconstruction and Changing Meanings of the Constitution
William Novak, “The Legal Transformation of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America”
Michael Vorenberg, “Bringing the Constitution Back In: Amendment, Innovation, and Popular
Democracy During the Civil War Era”
Friday June 29: Final Exam
4