Enslaved people were legally treated as disposable inventory property

Evidence

Again, another wave of queasiness washed through me. The finality of it. The hopelessness and helplessness. To be kept in such a barbaric institution. Granted, this was a legal practice in the United States at the time—but so inhumane. They were not property—these were people. Being treated as an item on an inventory list. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 372

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for property law as the afterlife of slavery — the reader’s stated thesis. — connects to: State courts adjudicated liability disputes over leased slave property like any other asset — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 237; Legal fictions once classified slaves as real estate and corporations as persons. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 95