This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the king's two bodies in book 1 (“Of the Rights of Persons”), chapter 7 (“Of the King's Prerogative”) of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. It argues that the secular jurisprudence of nineteenth-century America both needs a similar structure of embodiment and finds a correlate persona in the chattel slave. The discussions then turn to fugitive property, the book's method of “fugitive cuts”, and a subtle form of causality called agency of form.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the king's two bodies in book 1 (“Of the Rights of Persons”), chapter 7 (“Of the King's Prerogative”) of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. It argues that the secular jurisprudence of nineteenth-century America both needs a similar structure of embodiment and finds a correlate persona in the chattel slave. The discussions then turn to fugitive property, the book's method of “fugitive cuts”, and a subtle form of causality called agency of form.