Initially, in the U.S., the institution of marriage was rooted in social inequality Historian Linda Kerber has noted that, with the exception of eliminating
petit treason (treating the murder of a husband by his wife as regicide), "neither the government of the Articles of Confederation nor the federal government of the Constitution directly challenged the legal system of coverture."
(86) The statute divided the allegiance which every English subject owed his sovereign into two categories,
petit treason and high treason.
[T]herefore for a wife to kill her lord or husband, a servant his lord or master, and an ecclesiastic his lord or ordinary; these being breaches of the lower allegiance, of private and domestic faith, are denominated
petit treasons. But when disloyalty so rears its crest, as to attack even majesty itself, it is called by way of eminent distinction high treason ....