Early American

Many early American Jews, especially in the South, embraced slavery wholeheartedly.

And that’s how the pardon power operated in early American history: Prosecutors and judges routinely recommended clemency in unjust cases, which presidents granted as a matter of course.

As a historian of early American women and gender, however, I saw the deep and troubling roots of this rhetoric.

Early American women were subject to laws steeped in coverture’s assumptions of gendered inequality, and these restrictions continued long after the United States won its independence from Britain.

While husbands were charged with the protection of their wives under coverture, early American law and society justified the use of violence by husbands against wives, as a “moderate correction,” to enforce women’s submission and obedience.