Southern law did not protect enslaved families from forced separation by sale

Evidence

These sales often disrupted families. Most of the slaves were sold as individuals, not as families or groups. When an estate in Texas was divided among the heirs in 1848, a blacksmith, Armystead was sold in one lot, and his wife and three children were sold in another lot. This was not an isolated case. A few states had laws that prohibited selling little children apart from their mothers, but even these statutes had exceptions, and in countless sales husbands and wives were sold away from each other, brothers were separated from brothers and sisters from sisters, and older children from their parents and loved ones. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1343

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s cross-course thread on law/institutions failing to protect against structural harm — parallels modern environmental-justice examples where law codifies rather than remedies injury. — connects to: Southern courts openly declared slaves outside the protection of common law — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1352; The end of the Atlantic slave trade did not stop domestic slave kidnapping — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 525; Enslaved families experienced sale as a death-like separation — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 526 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Enslaved families experienced sale as a death-like separation #exemplifies (0.82) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 526
• Plantation slavery deliberately isolated slaves from each other and from information #corroborates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1105
• The end of the Atlantic slave trade did not stop domestic slave kidnapping #corroborates (0.72) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 525