JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

With all of the recent discussion about the efficacy of displaying the Confederate battle flag and the curious discussions about what the Civil War was, um, “about” (mostly the old and tired and semi retro-historical States’ Rights vs. Slavery argument), I think it would be interesting to have a look at what George M. Stroud wrote regarding slavery and Christianity.

The medium is a simple broadside/handout, about 8×5 inches, only, and was published in Philadelphia on September 15, 1863.  There’s a lot in those six paragraphs, and it is well worth a read.  (Note:  “negro” appears here uncapitalized, as was the practice to ensure a further inferiority of the race–“Slavery”, on the other hand, is capitalized.  “Negro” would not appear in capitalized form in common use until the 1930’s.)

Stroud was a legal expert on the issue of slavery and delivered devastating and accurate reports on the slave laws and treatment of slaves in twelve-holding states. This one leaflet is I suspect about as good a summary of slavery on 20 square inches of paper as can be, 

“Stroud’s Slave Laws had extensive influence upon national legal thinking on the issue of slavery. In a blanket survey of slave codes of the period, he analyzed the statutes of twelve slaveholding states. Stroud’s book exposed to the world, through its publications in 1827 and 1856, the diabolical nature of legal enactments throughout the South that debased both African people and those who held them in bondage.”–from the Black Classics Books, http://www.blackclassicbooks.com/strouds-slave-laws-george-m-stroud/

And from the Internet Archive is Stroud’s great classic of 1856,  A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery,   https://archive.org/details/asketchlawsrela00strogoog