Donald G. Nieman (Editor) DONALD G. NIEMAN is Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost SUNY-Binghamton.Christopher Waldrep (Editor) CHRISTOPHER WALDREP holds the Pasker Chair in American History at San Francisco State University. He is author of Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–80 and Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch, 1890–1915.

Examining how institutions operated on the ground, these essays emphasize that Americans' apparent dedication to legalism was a highly complex matter. With their focus on the nineteenth-century South, moreover, they do much to reveal the interactions of race, class, and gender in a society where ideals of democracy and hierarchy created a tension that could never be easily resolved. . . . A valuable contribution to the study of the nineteenth-century South. Its essays tell us much about southern legal history. They also do much to demonstrate the relevance of that history to our understanding of the larger complexities of the region and of the nation as a whole.

Donald G. Nieman (Editor) DONALD G. NIEMAN is Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost SUNY-Binghamton.Christopher Waldrep (Editor) CHRISTOPHER WALDREP holds the Pasker Chair in American History at San Francisco State University. He is author of Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–80 and Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch, 1890–1915.

Examining how institutions operated on the ground, these essays emphasize that Americans' apparent dedication to legalism was a highly complex matter. With their focus on the nineteenth-century South, moreover, they do much to reveal the interactions of race, class, and gender in a society where ideals of democracy and hierarchy created a tension that could never be easily resolved. . . . A valuable contribution to the study of the nineteenth-century South. Its essays tell us much about southern legal history. They also do much to demonstrate the relevance of that history to our understanding of the larger complexities of the region and of the nation as a whole.

Donald G. Nieman (Editor) DONALD G. NIEMAN is Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost SUNY-Binghamton.Christopher Waldrep (Editor) CHRISTOPHER WALDREP holds the Pasker Chair in American History at San Francisco State University. He is author of Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–80 and Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch, 1890–1915.

Examining how institutions operated on the ground, these essays emphasize that Americans' apparent dedication to legalism was a highly complex matter. With their focus on the nineteenth-century South, moreover, they do much to reveal the interactions of race, class, and gender in a society where ideals of democracy and hierarchy created a tension that could never be easily resolved. . . . A valuable contribution to the study of the nineteenth-century South. Its essays tell us much about southern legal history. They also do much to demonstrate the relevance of that history to our understanding of the larger complexities of the region and of the nation as a whole.