Starting Again

 Starting up this blog once again...it has been in hiding long enough

Time in Need

At first, white southerners insisted that only legally sanctioned efforts to enforce racial subordination could preserve order and compel blacks to remain productive members of the work force
Planters sought, in particular, to have former slaves sign written contracts that tied them to the land for a full year
Such contracts underscored the transformation in the social relations of the South
Mary Jones, a mistress on a Georgia plantation who took great pride in her treatment of slaves before the war, recounted that "I had considered (the slaves) friends and treated them as such", but now "they were only laborers under contract, and only the law would rule between us, and I would require every one of them to come up to the mark in their duty on the plantation."

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Butchering a Body

In 1636, the English led alliance became even stronger when a single Indian began circulating a trophy
Cutshamakin, a Massachusett warrior and guide to the English, "crept into a swamp and killed a Pequot, and having flayed off the skin of his head, he sent it to Canonicus, who presently sent it to all the sachems about him."
Once the scalp finally reached English hands, they rewarded the assassin with "four fathoms of wampom."
Cutshamakin's gift was not simply an example of an Indian offering a token of loyalty to his supposed overlords; crucially, the scalp had passed through a series of Indian villages before it got to Boston
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Animal Crimes

The nabbed poachers explained that it is cheaper and easier to take Yellowstone wildlife illegally and risk getting caught than to pay an outfitter thousands of dollars for guided hunting elsewhere

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Crimes

A man posing as a ridesharing driver rapes 7 women



A husband stabs and kills pregnant wife because he thought she was a voodoo priestess who planned to kill him



A man throws sulfuric acid on his roommate's face and body, leaving her critically wounded



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Control Over Humans

The Rationalization for the sexual exploitation of slaves from the conventional wisdom of southern whites that black women were naturally promiscuous and sought to copulate with white men.

Therefore, masters and overseers often approached female slaves expecting sexual favors.

When such favors were not forthcoming and these men encountered opposition to their requests, many resorted to outright force to achieve their purpose.

Sometimes the threat of violence was enough to resolve the matter.

As one slave explained to Fanny Kemble, the English actress who married a well to do Georgian planter, "We do anything to get our poor flesh some rest from de whip; when he made me follow him into de bush, what use me to tell him no? he have strength to make me".

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Family and Slave

The law under slavery had refused to recognize the autonomy of the black family, making it liable to separation at any time and treating it as part of the broader patriarchal household headed by the master
As the Virginia Law Journal pointed out in 1877, the slave "could not marry because he was legally incapable to consent, because the relation of husband and wife was inconsistent with that of master and slave, and because the slave had no status as a person before the law."
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