Dissertation Information for Christopher M. Curtis NAME: - Christopher M. Curtis
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (2002)
ADVISORS: - Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - James L Roark - Polly Price
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Jefferson's chosen people: Legal and political conceptions of the freehold in the Old Dominion from revolution to reform
Abstract: This study explores the intricacies of changing legal and political ideas of land ownership in antebellum Virginia. It focuses on changing discourses pertaining to the legal concept of the freehold and assesses the significance of Virginians' waning commitment to the ownership of land as the basis for political participation and individual liberty. I argue that the erosion of proprietary notions of civic obligation traditionally associated with the freehold placed increased emphasis on the status of slaveholding and made slaves, instead of land, the cornerstone of Virginia's polity. This study thus situates changing ideas of land ownership within the specific historical context of the sectional crisis over slavery and considers that crisis as part of the larger transformation in property relations that characterized nineteenth-century common law legal cultures.
When the Commonwealth was established during the American Revolution, the freehold was sanctified as the fundamental basis for self-government. Freeholders embodied the characteristics of economic self-sufficiency and local attachment, or vicinage, believed necessary for an independent and virtuous citizenry. Ownership of a freehold thus conferred an elite status upon an individual, replete with all of the rights and responsibilities of political participation. In addition to the well-known freehold qualification for suffrage, freeholders served in various official capacities as magistrates, sheriffs, and grand jurors, and were instrumental in the preservation of peace and the determination of justice at the local level.
By the mid-nineteenth century, however, nascent ideas of modern democracy were challenging the preference for the freehold-based political structure, while, simultaneously, more commercial forms of property holding and transfers were eroding the legal definition of the freehold. Virginia's lawyers responded to these challenges by engaging in a dialogue on legal reform that informed nineteenth century Anglo-American legal discourse. Many of the proposed reforms were premised upon an evolutionary theory of law that encouraged its instrumental application and undermined many of the legal principles upon which Virginians' traditional understanding of the freehold had been based.
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calculated 2008-01-31 22:53:53
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