(Source: OUP)
Oxford
University Press is publishing a book on freedom suits in the American South
between Independence and the Civil War.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Dred Scott and
his landmark Supreme Court case are ingrained in the national memory, but he
was just one of multitudes who appealed for their freedom in courtrooms across
the country. Appealing for Liberty is the most comprehensive study to give
voice to these African Americans, drawing from more than 2,000 suits and from
the testimony of more than 4,000 plaintiffs from the Revolutionary era to the
Civil War. Through the petitions, evidence, and testimony introduced in these
court proceedings, the lives of the enslaved come sharply and poignantly into
focus, as do many other aspects of southern society such as the efforts to
preserve and re-unite black families. This book depicts in graphic terms, the
pain, suffering, fears, and trepidations of the plaintiffs while discussing the
legal system—lawyers, judges, juries, and testimony—that made judgments on
their "causes," as the suits were often called.
Arguments for
freedom were diverse: slaves brought suits claiming they had been freed in
wills and deeds, were born of free mothers, were descendants of free white
women or Indian women; they charged that they were illegally imported to some
states or were residents of the free states and territories. Those who
testified on their behalf, usually against leaders of their communities, were
generally white. So too were the lawyers who took these cases, many of them men
of prominence, such as Francis Scott Key. More often than not, these men were
slave owners themselves-- complicating our understanding of race relations in
the antebellum period.
A majority of
the cases examined here were not appealed, nor did they create important
judicial precedent. Indeed, most of the cases ended at the county, circuit, or
district court level of various southern states. Yet the narratives of both
those who gained their freedom and those who failed to do so, and the issues
their suits raised, shed a bold and timely light on the history of race and
liberty in the "land of the free."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Loren
Schweninger is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North
Carolina, Greensboro, where he taught for forty years. He was Director of the
Race and Slavery Petitions Project from 1991-2009, creating the Digital Library
on American Slavery during his tenure, and is the author of numerous books,
including the Lincoln-Prize winning Runaway Slaves: Rebels in the Plantations
(2010), co-authored with John Hope Franklin.
More information
here
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