Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America (Studies in Legal History)

Presenting a new framework for understanding the complex but vital relationship between legal history and the family, Michael Grossberg analyzes the formation of legal policies on such issues as common law marriage, adoption, and rights for illegitimate children. He shows how legal changes diminished male authority, increased women's and children's rights, and fixed more clearly the state's responsibilities in family affairs. Grossberg further illustrates why many basic principles of this distinctive and powerful new body of law--antiabortion and maternal biases in child custody--remained in effect well into the twentieth century. Domestic relations : a law for Republican families -- Broken promises : judges and the law of courtship -- Nutial license : the regulation of weddings -- Matrimonial limitations: who's fit to wed? -- Contraception and abortion : who controls the womb? -- Bastard rights : recognizing a new family member -- Custody rights : who gets the child? -- A judicial patriarchy : family law at the turn of the century. Henry King Burgwyn Jr, one of the youngest colonels in the Confederate Army, died at the age of 21 while leading the 26th North Carolina regiment into action at the battle of Gettysburg. This biography provides a portrait of his character as a soldier who selflessly fulfilled his duty. The "foundation of national morality must be laid in private families," declared Revolutionary lawyer and future president John Adams in 1778.