""No Bond but the Law" is one of the most interesting and intellectually ambitious works of scholarship to be published in the field of slave and emancipation studies in recent years. Diana Paton has written a book that takes several important conceptual matters and historiographies--emancipation, punishment, gender, and state formation--and puts them together in a remarkably compelling and original way."--Steven Hahn, author of "A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration"
""No Bond but the Law" is a model of research procedure and historical writing."--Sidney Mintz, author of "Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History"
