Coroners’ inquests are some of the richest records we have of life and death in the Old South. In some cases, the inquest is pro forma. A jury is called and concludes that the person lying before them died “at the hands of a person or persons unknown.” But in many cases the record is far richer. The antebellum coroner was not a homicide detective or a medical examiner – he was both ("Quincy” meets “Columbo"). He inspected the body and (possible crime) scene, rounded up witnesses, heard testimony, and made a recommendation. If there was cause, he would seek an arrest warrant. Far more than the sheriff, he was familiar with the strange intimacies inherent in the varied ways people go out of the world.

Examining the coroner’s inquests for several S.C. counties between 1800 and 1860, I discovered evidence that would support studies of antebellum abortion, child abuse, spousal abuse, master-slave murder, and slave on slave violence. To be sure, one gets glimpses of these same things in more traditional court records. But especially in the Old South, cases like these had a way of not quite percolating up through the court system. (And this says nothing of cases in which nothing “actionable” occurred – cases of suicide, accidental death, or “act of God.")

Equally interesting was what happens when I pressed forward into the war years. It was as if Death had gone on holiday. Death goes where men go; between 1861 and 1865, it held high revel – in men’s camps and on their battlefields; it had slipped its bureaucratic leash. But what happened to the coroners who remained at home? Had dying, even on the homefront, changed? And when was Death “re-leashed"?