HIST 339 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Southern Baptist Convention
Document Summary
So we ended off last class talking about uncle tom"s cabin. Jameson was chosen because of his relative neutrality and expertise in the court. Professor mentions that there are some people who to this day argue that the baby was not actually stillborn, but rather that it was taken away (and that its descendants still live today) That it was not premeditated and shouldn"t be judged as first-degree murder. Argued that enslaved women had the right to refuse/defend herself from sexual advance (that the law protecting women from this applied not only to white women) That it was impossible for her to have done it by herself. It was illegal for slaves to testify on their own behalf in court (which was why celia herself never spoke during the trial) On the history of rape legislation in the 19th century:
