Book Review:
Eugene D. Genovese, Slavery in the Legal History of the South and the Nation (reviewing Paul Finkelman’s An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity, Michael S. Hindus’ Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, and Mark v. Tushnet, The American Law of Slavery, 1810-1860: Considerations of Humanity and Interest), 59 Texas L. Rev. 969 (1981).
 

Abstract:
Paul Finkelman, in his stimulating and readable book, An Imperfect Union, reminds us constantly, as the best legal historians always do, that “the law” must be understood not as some abstract “force” but as the product of human beings whose lives at law add their own special force and meaning to the institutions in which they function. Accordingly, he treats secession as a constitutional crisis in federalism but resist the sterile, if once fashionable, tendency to isolate its legal aspects from socio-economic considerations. At his considerable best, he views legal history as an inextricable part of social, economic, and politicasl history, rather than as a wholly autonomous influence driven by its own rules, logic, and institutional exigencies.

Prison and Plantation analyzes the legal development of the free and slave states by comparing prisons in nineteenth century Massachusetts with South Carolina’s slavery system. There is much to admire here, including valuable discussions of such neglected subjects as the South Carolina county courts, the legal position of women, and the laws of marriage and divorce. Nonetheless, Prison and Plantation prove disappointing, the more so since it slights the best recent work on the subject.