Images of angry shotgun-wielding fathers out to protect their daughters’ virtue have long been the stuff of literature and Hollywood (and even the occasional political campaign ad), but lawmakers in Civil War-era Georgia wanted to offer another avenue to seek satisfaction from a scoundrel who sullied a maiden’s honor.
In 1863, when many of the state’s men were off fighting or had been laid low by enemy fire, the Georgia Legislature made the “seduction of a daughter” a civil tort for which a father—or, if he was unavailable, a mother—could sue for “exemplary damages.”
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