Creating Law through Regulating Intimacy: The Case of Slave Marriage in Nineteenth-Century New York and the United States

Abstract This article argues that American jurists fashioned new understandings about the capacity of states to legislate marriage through regulating intimate lives enslaved and newly freed individuals. does so analyzing creation impact a little-studied 1809 law in New York legalized marriages people—while individuals were still enslaved—as part state's process gradual emancipation, which occurred from 1799 1827. In York, by legalizing people's marriages, privatized financial liabilities within soon-to-be families. The stood at odds with national juridical understanding marital regulation. Jurists early republic uncertain whether could matrimony. Southern after Civil War then cited replicated York's logic legislating legalize freedpeople, similarly privatizing claims cases both jurists, choosing privatization, foreclosed possibilities for different or broader vision state support such as reparations. After making laws slavery, created and/or tightened their laws, further inscribing family into governance. piece contributes historiographies state, intimacy.