I’m doing my senior research paper on why the South had the right to secde. Right now I’m almost done but I need a source for a few questions involving slavery.
I’ve found the book A Constitutional History of Secession to be a great source of information on slavery and I wrote down pages as I went through that had subjects of interest. But I can’t seem to find some of them again. One part of the book told about laws passed in some Southern states that if a slave owner wanted to move from one state to another he was not allowed to bring his slaves with him. Another that slaves used certain passages from the Bible which said that a slave should use any legal means necessary to free himself. And how some slaves were actually able to sue their masters in Southern courts to win their emancipation. I wanted to add this to my paper to make a stronger case.
If anyone knows another source I could reference these two statements to it would be greatly appreciated.
Read “Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men” by Jeffery Rogers Hummell. It is a VERY well investigated book, with footnotes that are so detailed they should be chapters in and of themselves. It talks about that due to the rising tension between the antebellum North and South as well as due to fear of slave uprisings that southern states were starting to severly restrict manumission laws. Essentially many slave owners could not free their slaves even if they wanted to. It also gives a detailed economic analysis of how slavery lowered the standard of living for everyone in the South. Be aware though that it is a book highly critical of both the North AND the South from a hardcore Libertarian prespective.
For discussions about secession the best source is Donald Livingston. You can download some of his lectures at the Abbeville Institure website. Other lectures you can buy from Apologia Books .