The Law of Second Chains

This book examines the years after the Civil War when new constitutions and federal amendments promised emancipation, yet local statutes and Supreme‑Court rulings quietly re‑bound Black life in legal and economic chains. It traces how Reconstruction's fragile gains—voting rights, land claims, and citizenship—were hollowed out by Black Codes, convict‑leasing statutes, and Jim Crow frameworks that turned freedom into another form of coerced labor. The narrative follows three intertwined mechanisms: the drafting and enforcement of Black Codes that criminalized movement and poverty, the rise of convict leasing and debt‑peonage systems that turned courts into slave‑hunters, and the retreat of federal protection amid Supreme‑Court decisions that narrowed civil‑rights guarantees. Drawing on court records, Freedmen's Bureau files, and local ordinances, the book shows how law, not only custom, re‑inscribed hierarchy and kept Black families locked into a segregated, low‑wage economy.