Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

8-11-2005

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; PRN Subject Matter eJournals; English & American Literature Research Network; Philosophy Research Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Public Law & Legal Theory; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; LIT Subject Matter eJournals; Humanities Network

Abstract

In the antebellum era literary addresses were a common and popular form of public expression Legal historians have profitably mined Fourth of July orations and addresses in Congress for insight into the intellectual worlds of the antebellum era Yet they have made virtually no use of the literary address which are aimed at a different and more elite audiences This essay employs a close analysis of nearly forty addresses given at the University of Alabama from 1832 through 1860 to gauge the changes in thought in the antebellum South on political theory and jurisprudence It uses the addresses to create a picture of the world view of the judgesThe addresses moreover illustrate the changes from Enlightenment ideas of moral and technological progress to a static proslavery vision of the late antebellum period They allow us to assess the orators intellect interests knowledge and belief systems The addresses illustrate a wideranging respect for ideas including the abolition of capital punishment the scholars search for truth against the tide of public opinion republicanism democracy radicalism in American politics and the importance of slavery to Southern culture A final section turns to judicial opinions in Alabama to make a preliminary sketch of the ways that some of the ideas expressed in the addresses correlate with the moral philosophical views of judgesThe addresses thus emerge as important windows into antebellum Southern thought and as vehicles for mapping in detail the intellectual world of moral and political philosophy inhabited by southerners particularly judges and legislators in the years leading into Civil War Finally the essay begins to sketch key pieces of jurisprudence such as considerations of utility the importance of history and culture and morality as it provides a model of how to mine the hundreds of addresses delivered to other literary societies north and south in the years before Civil War for insights into legal thought

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