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Before Dred Scott draws on the freedom suits filed in the St Louis Circuit Court to construct a groundbreaking history of slavery and legal culture within the American Confluence, a vast region where the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers converge. Formally divided between slave and free territories and states, the American Confluence was nevertheless a site where the borders between slavery and freedom, like the borders within the region itself, were fluid. Such ambiguity produced a radical indeterminacy of status, which, in turn, gave rise to a distinctive legal culture made manifest by the prosecution of hundreds of freedom suits, including the case that ultimately culminated in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs Sandford. Challenging dominant trends in legal history, Before Dred Scott argues that this distinctive legal culture, above all, was defined by ordinary people's remarkable understanding of and appreciation for formal law.
Before Dred Scott draws on the freedom suits filed in the St Louis Circuit Court to construct a groundbreaking history of slavery and legal culture within the American Confluence, a vast region where the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers converge. Formally divided between slave and free territories and states, the American Confluence was nevertheless a site where the borders between slavery and freedom, like the borders within the region itself, were fluid. Such ambiguity produced a radical indeterminacy of status, which, in turn, gave rise to a distinctive legal culture made manifest by the prosecution of hundreds of freedom suits, including the case that ultimately culminated in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs Sandford. Challenging dominant trends in legal history, Before Dred Scott argues that this distinctive legal culture, above all, was defined by ordinary people's remarkable understanding of and appreciation for formal law.
Introduction; 1. A radical indeterminacy of status; 2. 'With the ease of a veteran litigant'; 3. '[B]y the help of God and a good lawyer'; 4. Slavery from liberty to equality; 5. '[W]orking his emancipation'; 6. Exploiting the uncertainties of federalism; 7. Remembering slavery and freedom in the American Confluence; Conclusion; Acknowledgements; Appendix.
An analysis of slave and slaveholder understanding and manipulation of formal legal systems in the region known as the American Confluence during the antebellum era.
'Anne Twitty's compact and compelling book prompts us to redraw
regional borders and rethink legal cultures. In contrast to the
longstanding view of the 'American Confluence' as a house divided,
a place where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers bounded conflicting
regimes of slave and free labor, Before Dred Scott forwards an
alternative mapping characterized by fluid borders and connected by
a common legal culture with remarkably deep roots among diverse
populations. The book will not settle arguments about regions and
rules of law, but it will provoke some very productive ones.'
Stephen Aron, Robert N. Burr Department Chair, Department of
History, University of California, Los Angeles
'Anne Twitty has brilliantly illuminated a significant chapter in
the struggle against slavery - the hundreds of 'freedom suits'
brought by persons invoking the doctrine of 'once free, always
free' to claim that their prior status as free persons invalidated
their enslavement. Not all of them succeeded, but Twitty has done
more than show what happened in the courtroom. She has given
historical presence to the lives of the freedom seekers: to her
exhaustive research into their lives she has added a sure-handed
and creative touch that makes this book one of the most significant
contributions to antislavery scholarship in many years.' David
Konig, Washington University, St Louis
'… Twitty offers fresh insights into the case of the famous slave
sojourner from Missouri. … Twitty adds a new layer to our
understanding of the complex relationship between slavery and
American legal culture.' Timothy S. Huebner, Missouri Historical
Review
'Drawing on 282 freedom suits, Twitty seeks to depict how law
operated as a contested reality amid the indeterminacy that defined
both race and race-based status. Following the maturing
historiography moving beyond the black-letter law of statutes and
codes, Twitty probes what she describes as a legal culture
constructed by everyday interactions. In short, she reaches to law
as a lived reality rather than as an inscribed text … enlightening
…' Thomas J. Davis, The Journal of American History
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