{"title":"Lydia","authors":"Sally Greene","doi":"10.1353/scu.2024.a934714","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>An enslaved woman named Lydia was the victim of the 1829 assault in Chowan County, North Carolina, that was at issue in <i>State v. Mann</i>. After a trial court convicted John Mann for shooting Lydia as she fled from his punishment, the North Carolina Supreme Court, in a decision written by Thomas Ruffin, exonerated him. Ruffin reasoned that nothing short of \"absolute\" physical power of the enslaver over the enslaved could keep the institution of slavery intact. The opinion gave license to enslavers while it gave moral ballast to the abolitionist cause, with its frank acknowledgment of the cruelty at the heart of slavery. This essay approaches <i>State v. Mann</i> through the story of Lydia's life. Reading the archives closely, it speculates that Lydia, like Harriet Jacobs (whose story was unfolding in the same town at the same time), was the victim of sexual as well as physical abuse.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42657,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHERN CULTURES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"SOUTHERN CULTURES","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/scu.2024.a934714","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
Abstract:
An enslaved woman named Lydia was the victim of the 1829 assault in Chowan County, North Carolina, that was at issue in State v. Mann. After a trial court convicted John Mann for shooting Lydia as she fled from his punishment, the North Carolina Supreme Court, in a decision written by Thomas Ruffin, exonerated him. Ruffin reasoned that nothing short of "absolute" physical power of the enslaver over the enslaved could keep the institution of slavery intact. The opinion gave license to enslavers while it gave moral ballast to the abolitionist cause, with its frank acknowledgment of the cruelty at the heart of slavery. This essay approaches State v. Mann through the story of Lydia's life. Reading the archives closely, it speculates that Lydia, like Harriet Jacobs (whose story was unfolding in the same town at the same time), was the victim of sexual as well as physical abuse.
期刊介绍：
In the foreword to the first issue of the The Southern Literary Journal, published in November 1968, founding editors Louis D. Rubin, Jr. and C. Hugh Holman outlined the journal"s objectives: "To study the significant body of southern writing, to try to understand its relationship to the South, to attempt through it to understand an interesting and often vexing region of the American Union, and to do this, as far as possible, with good humor, critical tact, and objectivity--these are the perhaps impossible goals to which The Southern Literary Journal is committed." Since then The Southern Literary Journal has published hundreds of essays by scholars of southern literature examining the works of southern writers and the ongoing development of southern culture.
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