Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Swanson, Drew Addison

Titel

Fighting over Fencing: Agricultural Reform and Antebellum Efforts to Close the Virginia Open Range

Ist Teil von

• The Virginia magazine of history and biography, 2009-04, Vol.117 (2), p.103

Ort / Verlag

Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, Newspapers

Erscheinungsjahr

2009

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• If an animal breached this fence, a farmer could claim damages against its owner after "two honest men" chosen by the county commissioner deemed the fence legal.9 Although the language of this statute was far from technical, the involvement of neighbors in settling fence disputes ameliorated some of the vagaries. [...] the law became a community standard; if one's neighbors believed a fence was legal, then it was legal under the law. [...] the Virginia debates before the war over stock fence versus crop fence laws highlight the importance of economic and agronomic arguments about fencing reform rather than point to labor or race control as the primary goal of antebellum fence law reform.