Homestead laws and debtors’ prison:
The early women’s rights revolution:
“[T]he principle of the common law
[is that] the husband and wife are regarded as one person, and her legal
existence and authority in a degree lost or suspended during the continuance of
the matrimonial union. … [D]uring the more polished ages of Roman
jurisprudence, … the wife was admitted to the benefit of a liberal ante-nuptial
contract, by which her private property was secured to her, and a more
reasonable equality of condition between the husband and wife introduced. … ,
Whatever doubts may arise in the mind of a person educated in the school of the
common law as to the wisdom … [of] the civil law; yet, it cannot be denied,
that the pre-eminence of [nations that have adopted the civil law] … is
most strikingly displayed in the equality and dignity which their institutions
confer upon the female character.” Marital trusts, an early instrument of women’s rights: White v. Hart – Pennsylvania, 1793 (1 Yeates 221); Trustees of Methodist Episcopal Church v. Jaques – New York, 1817-20 (3 Johns. Ch. 77, 17 Johns. 548); Lancaster v. Dolan – Pennsylvania, 1829 (1 Rawle 231)
| New York City debtor's prison (built 1758) - courtesy New York Public Library Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848) - courtesy Wikipedia Cartoon satirizing modern marriage (New York, 1852) - courtesy New York Public LIbrary “Here was a fair and lawful agreement between them [husband and wife] … Why should she not have a right in equity, of disposing of her lands, as incident to her ownership?” – Chief Justice Thomas McKean, in White “These very settlements are intended to protect her weakness against her husband’s power, and her maintenance against his dissipation. It is a protection which this Court allows her to assume … and it ought not to be rendered illusory.” – Chancellor James Kent, in Jaques “There is an unbroken current of decisions, that a feme covert, with respect to her separate estate, is to be regarded in a court of equity as a feme sole, and may dispose of her property without the consent or concurrence of her trustee … [But] the rules of the common law, which give to the husband all the wife’s personal property … are better calculated, in my judgment, to secure domestic tranquility and happiness, … [T]he possession by the wife of property, independent of and beyond the control of the husband, would be likely to produce perpetual feuds and contention.” – Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer, in Jaques |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 2. MID-ATLANTIC LEGAL HISTORY > 2.3. The Mid-Atlantic States: The Antebellum Era (1825-1865) > 2.3.1. The Mid-Atlantic States (1825-1865): Law and the Transportation Revolution > 2.3.2. The Mid-Atlantic States (1825-1865): The Cradle of Corporate America > 2.3.3. The Mid-Atlantic States (1825-1865): Jacksonians and Banks > 2.3.4. The Mid-Atlantic States (1825-1865): A Region Against Slavery >