Law in American History, Volume 1 From the Colonial Years Through the Civil War

"G. Edward White's first volume of Law in American History is an outstanding contribution to legal history. The book surveys the history of American law through the end of the Civil War in remarkable detail for a single-volume work." --Journal of American History
"This is a magisterial account of a series of dramatic legal developments. Essential." --CHOICE
"Never before has a work on American legal history engaged so profoundly with the distinctiveness of America's displacement of Indians and enslavement of Africans. This fascinating and original book will change the way the category 'American law' is defined."--Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School
"In this ambitious and sweeping narrative of a formative era in American legal and constitutional history, White takes us a large step forward in our thinking about the relationships among law, politics, and culture."--Alison la Croix, University of Chicago Law School
"Ted White is one of the few legal historians whose broad and deep knowledge of American law from the earliest years to the present might enable him to synthesize the American legal experience. This magnificent first volume of a multivolume history takes us up to the Civil War, and provides a compelling, coherent, challenging, and readable account of the first half of American legal history. Law in American History is the welcome culmination of a lifetime of scholarship."--Stanley n. Katz, Princeton University
"White embeds American law in our culture and thus links legal doctrine and institutions to the ideas of freedom central to our nation's development. This is an authoritative work of American history, told through the framework of law."--Alfred L. Brophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"In this wonderful volume, we see a masterful historian at the top of his game. White synthesizes and makes accessible a truly immense amount of material-making coherent evolv