Download or read book Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion written by Christopher Michael Curtis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jefferson's Freeholders explores the processes by which Virginia was transformed from a British colony into a Southern slave state. Focusing on ideas of ownership, the book emphasizes the persistent influence of English common law on the state's political culture. It uniquely details how the traditional principles of land tenure were subverted by the economic and political changes of the nineteenth century and how they fostered law reforms that encouraged the idea that slavery should replace land ownership as the distinguishing basis for political power.