ABSTRACT
"Civil death" typically manifested in the form of "degradation to slavery", "superseded by condemnation to the mines", which included being "sent into the mines themselves" or "to some smelting-house or other works connected with the mines". It also included deprivation of citizenship. Civil death was thus the epitome of capital punishment, with the body kept alive – and put to work – while being stripped of its subjectivity by law. African-Americans in the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century suffered a form of civil death as a result of their non-recognition as wholly rightful persons in the United States. The African peoples over whom the government sought to exercise dominion remained "Liberian" in name alone, the two being synonymous only in the language of the national law. The Americo-Liberian vision of making citizens out of the African peoples living within the envisioned territory of the Republic can also be read in this report.
