Judge Thomas Ruffin and the Shadows of Southern History: An article from Southern Cultures 17:3, The Memory Issue

by Sally Greene

Overview

Judge Thomas Ruffin and the Shadows of Southern History
by Sally Greene

North Carolina's State Capitol still houses a statue to one of southern history's most notorious pro-slave-owner judges. Why?

"Ruffin was ideologically sympathetic to the Confederate cause and remained so to his death. 'The power of the master must be absolute,' Ruffin wrote in State v. Mann (1829), 'to render the submission of the slave perfect.' State v. Mann became the most notorious opinion in the entire body of slavery law."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807882801
Publisher:	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for the Study of the American South
Publication date:	09/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sally Greene is an independent scholar whose interests include the law, literature, and history of the American South. Her essays have appeared in the Southern Quarterly, the Mississippi Quarterly, the Journal of Modern Literature, and the North Carolina Law Review. She is Associate Director of the UNC Center for the Study of the American South.