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2022
- handle: 10670/1.ftdgyv
- isbn: 9782367814483
- hal: hal-04363560
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Slavery Abolitionism LawSujets proches
Legislative acts Legislative enactments Acts, Legislative Enactments, Legislative Laws (Statutes)Citer ce document
Michaël Roy, « "A system of lawless violence": American Abolitionists, Slavery, and the Law », HAL-SHS : histoire, ID : 10670/1.ftdgyv
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US abolitionists devised strategies that relied on, confronted, and subverted the law. In this essay, I trace their gradual move from legal tactics in the revolutionary era to forms of extralegal resistance during the antebellum period, while suggesting that the legal and the extralegal often coexisted in their repertoire. They were two sides of the same antislavery coin, I argue, rather than conflicting modes of action that excluded each other. Abolitionists could invoke the law and its language and at the same time reject legislation protecting slavery. Examining their relationship with the law over the longue durée helps complicate the enduring narrative of a transformation of US abolitionism from a conservative, law-abiding movement into a radical, law-defying one.