Scholars have shown increasing interest in the multifaceted legal dimensions of slavery. Yet the inheritance rights of enslaved women and children have received little sustained attention. This neglect is remedied by this fine work. In Fathers of Conscience, Bernie D. Jones skillfully explores cases in which white fathers sought to grant freedom and transfer property to their female slave partners as well as the mixed-race children of such unions. Focusing on appellate decisions in southern states, Jones details the human situation involved in these cases, and she highlights the complex intersection of legal norms, property, race, and social mores that formed the backdrop for litigation dealing with the inheritance rights of slave women and children.

Notwithstanding social taboos and family disapproval, there were numerous instances of owner-slave sexual relationships. Conflict arose when owners sought to provide for their slave family. Typically, the relatives of the white fathers contested will provisions in favor of the enslaved beneficiaries, arguing that the testator was incompetent or under the undue influence of black women. The ensuing lawsuits set the stage for a clash of competing values. On the one hand, U.S. law has long recognized a large degree of testamentary freedom. Indeed, the law of inheritance was revamped after the Revolution to strengthen the power of testators to leave their property by will. Moreover, important property rights were at issue. Owners generally have a right to dispose of their property and to relinquish ownership. On the other hand, state lawmakers feared a growing free black population as a threat to slavery. They progressively tightened manumission laws throughout the antebellum years, thus curtailing the rights of slave owners. In addition, many southerners were concerned that by owning property, former slaves would gain a measure of independence inconsistent with white social control. They called for courts to protect wealth within white families. Torn by conflicting considerations, judges had to decide the extent to which the felt need to safeguard the social order of slavery should prevail over the property rights of individual testators.

Jones explains the outcome of these will contests in terms of the jurisdiction where the cases arose and legal attitudes of the judges. The legal culture of the different slave states varied widely. Slave claimants had a greater prospect of success in states such as Kentucky, which adopted a relatively relaxed attitude toward manumission. In contrast, courts in the lower South such as those in Mississippi, were reluctant to recognize any right of slaves to either secure freedom or inherit property. The personal sympathies of judges also influenced how they viewed questions of freedom and inheritance. Some jurists reacted to growing abolitionist fervor in northern states by adopting a defensive attitude toward slavery as an institution. They were inclined to reject any assertion of freedom and the right to inherit, regardless of the white father's expressed intention. Other jurists were less fearful of manumission and more skeptical about laws restricting the rights of slave owners. Judge John B. O'Neall of South Carolina, for example, championed the rights of owners to dispose of their property by will.

The importance of property rights is an implicit theme throughout the book. The most obvious aspect of the property rights in contention was the testamentary freedom of white fathers. This point receives the most attention from Jones. Equally significant, if less well developed by the author, was the relationship between property and liberty. Anglo-American constitutional thought has long emphasized individual property as a bulwark of freedom. Jones notes an 1840 petition by white citizens from Union District, South Carolina, protesting the use of trusts to hold property for slave beneficiaries. The petition revealingly declared: “Money is Power, and none need live in servitude who can command it” (143). These white petitioners, as well as the black beneficiaries of wills, clearly recognized that ownership of private property by slaves was a liberating force at odds with the social order of slavery. Although coming from a different perspective, Congress shared this view. In the Civil Rights Act of 1866 Congress, anxious to destroy the vestiges of slavery, affirmed the right of recently emancipated slaves to inherit and purchase property. The right to acquire property was seen as a vital hallmark of a free society.

Aside from issues pertaining to property ownership, this book provides a wealth of information about conceptions of moral behavior, interracial sexual activity, and notions of family in the antebellum South. Jones has carefully mined trial court records to uncover the highly personal nature of these inheritance disputes. She has provided an insightful examination of slavery, manumission, freedom, and property rights that should have a broad appeal to scholars.