Fathers of Conscience: Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South

by Bernie D. Jones

Fathers of Conscience examines high-court decisions in the antebellum South that involved wills in which white male planters bequeathed property, freedom, or both to women of color and their mixed-race children. These men, whose wills were contested by their white relatives, had used trusts and estates law to give their slave partners and children official recognition and thus circumvent the law of slavery. The will contests that followed determined whether that elevated status would be approved or denied by courts of law.

Bernie D. Jones argues that these will contests indicated a struggle within the elite over race, gender, and class issues―over questions of social mores and who was truly family. Judges thus acted as umpires after a man's death, deciding whether to permit his attempts to provide for his slave partner and family. Her analysis of these differing judicial opinions on inheritance rights for slave partners makes an important contribution to the literature on the law of slavery in the United States.

Genres: History

216 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2009

Reviews

[Darlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to tag a book "really liked it" when the subject matter is so accurately and depressingly focused not on the rights of enslaved people to inherit (not the issue, essentially they had no rights), but on the rights of white men with guilty consciences to leave money and property to blood relatives who were black.

This work is geared towards attorneys and researchers, and I found it interesting because even though I am not a lawyer, my husband does estates, wills and trusts in Florida. Land inheritance in the rural south to this day can be quite convoluted, but this book deals in particular with men who wanted to provide for their offspring or their children's mothers. Not surprisingly, white relatives who were not direct descendants fought these distributions and the courts had to deal with cases that could vary from state to state.

I'd recommend this book to serious researchers who want to delve into the complexities of a legal system propping up the South's "peculiar institution" and what it meant for the families affected by enslavement, mixed-race relationships and inheritance.

[ElKazovskyfan23]

Read the first 3 chapters, would love to finish up sometime.