Download or read book In the Shadow of Dred Scott written by Kelly M. Kennington and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2017-04-15 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dred Scott suit for freedom, argues Kelly M. Kennington, was merely the most famous example of a phenomenon that was more widespread in antebellum American jurisprudence than is generally recognized. The author draws on the case files of more than three hundred enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in the local legal arena of St. Louis. Her findings open new perspectives on the legal culture of slavery and the negotiated processes involved in freedom suits. As a gateway to the American West, a major port on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and a focal point in the rancorous national debate over slavery’s expansion, St. Louis was an ideal place for enslaved individuals to challenge the legal systems and, by extension, the social systems that held them in forced servitude. Kennington offers an in-depth look at how daily interactions, webs of relationships, and arguments presented in court shaped and reshaped legal debates and public attitudes over slavery and freedom in St. Louis. Kennington also surveys more than eight hundred state supreme court freedom suits from around the United States to situate the St. Louis example in a broader context. Although white enslavers dominated the antebellum legal system in St. Louis and throughout the slaveholding states, that fact did not mean that the system ignored the concerns of the subordinated groups who made up the bulk of the American population. By looking at a particular example of one group’s encounters with the law—and placing these suits into conversation with similar encounters that arose in appellate cases nationwide—Kennington sheds light on the ways in which the law responded to the demands of a variety of actors.
Download or read book In the Shadow of Dred Scott written by Kelly Marie Kennington and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dred Scott suit for freedom, argues Kelly M. Kennington, was merely the most famous example of a phenomenon that was more widespread in antebellum American jurisprudence than is generally recognized. The author draws on the case files of more than three hundred enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in the local legal arena of St. Louis. Her findings open new perspectives on the legal culture of slavery and the negotiated processes involved in freedom suits. As a gateway to the American West, a major port on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and a focal point in the rancorous national debate over slavery's expansion, St. Louis was an ideal place for enslaved individuals to challenge the legal systems and, by extension, the social systems that held them in forced servitude. Kennington offers an in-depth look at how daily interactions, webs of relationships, and arguments presented in court shaped and reshaped legal debates and public at-titudes over slavery and freedom in St. Louis. Kennington also surveys more than eight hundred state supreme court freedom suits from around the United States to situate the St. Louis example in a broader context. Although white enslavers dominated the antebellum legal system in St. Louis and throughout the slaveholding states, that fact did not mean that the system ignored the concerns of the subordinated groups who made up the bulk of the American population. By looking at a particular example of one group's encounters with the law--and placing these suits into conversation with similar en-counters that arose in appellate cases nationwide--Kennington sheds light on the ways in which the law responded to the demands of a variety of actors.
Download or read book Before Dred Scott written by Anne Twitty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-31 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Litigating Across the Color Line written by Melissa Lambert Milewski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a largely previously untold story, from 1865 to 1950, black litigants throughout the South took on white southerners in civil suits. Drawing on almost a thousand cases, Milewski shows how African Americans negotiated the southern legal system and won suits against whites after the Civil War and before the Civil Rights struggle.
Download or read book Origins of the Dred Scott Case written by Austin Allen and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision denied citizenship to African Americans and enabled slavery's westward expansion. It has long stood as a grievous instance of justice perverted by sectional politics. Austin Allen finds that the outcome of Dred Scott hinged not on a single issue-slavery-but on a web of assumptions, agendas, and commitments held collectively and individually by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and his colleagues. By showing us the political, professional, ideological, and institutional contexts in which the Taney Court worked, Allen reveals that Dred Scott was not simply a victory for the court's prosouthern faction. It was instead an outgrowth of Jacksonian jurisprudence, an intellectual system that charged the court with protecting slavery, preserving both federal power and state sovereignty, promoting economic development, and securing the legal foundations of an emerging corporate order-all at the same time.
Download or read book Southern Slavery and the Law 1619 1860 written by Thomas D. Morris and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004-01-21 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first comprehensive history of the evolving relationship between American slavery and the law from colonial times to the Civil War. As Thomas Morris clearly shows, racial slavery came to the English colonies as an institution without strict legal definitions or guidelines. Specifically, he demonstrates that there was no coherent body of law that dealt solely with slaves. Instead, more general legal rules concerning inheritance, mortgages, and transfers of property coexisted with laws pertaining only to slaves. According to Morris, southern lawmakers and judges struggled to reconcile a social order based on slavery with existing English common law (or, in Louisiana, with continental civil law.) Because much was left to local interpretation, laws varied between and even within states. In addition, legal doctrine often differed from local practice. And, as Morris reveals, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, tensions mounted between the legal culture of racial slavery and the competing demands of capitalism and evangelical Christianity.
Download or read book Supreme Injustice written by Paul Finkelman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three most important Supreme Court Justices before the Civil War—Chief Justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney and Associate Justice Joseph Story—upheld the institution of slavery in ruling after ruling. These opinions cast a shadow over the Court and the legacies of these men, but historians have rarely delved deeply into the personal and political ideas and motivations they held. In Supreme Injustice, the distinguished legal historian Paul Finkelman establishes an authoritative account of each justice’s proslavery position, the reasoning behind his opposition to black freedom, and the incentives created by circumstances in his private life. Finkelman uses census data and other sources to reveal that Justice Marshall aggressively bought and sold slaves throughout his lifetime—a fact that biographers have ignored. Justice Story never owned slaves and condemned slavery while riding circuit, and yet on the high court he remained silent on slave trade cases and ruled against blacks who sued for freedom. Although Justice Taney freed many of his own slaves, he zealously and consistently opposed black freedom, arguing in Dred Scott that free blacks had no Constitutional rights and that slave owners could move slaves into the Western territories. Finkelman situates this infamous holding within a solid record of support for slavery and hostility to free blacks. Supreme Injustice boldly documents the entanglements that alienated three major justices from America’s founding ideals and embedded racism ever deeper in American civic life.
Download or read book The Dred Scott Case written by Roger Brooke Taney and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Washington University Libraries presents an online exhibit of documents regarding the Dred Scott case. American slave Dred Scott (1795?-1858) and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom in the Saint Louis Circuit Court in 1846. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1857 that the Scotts must remain slaves.
Download or read book Dred Scott and the Politics of Slavery written by Earl M. Maltz and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Closely examines on of the Supreme Court's most infamous decisions: that went far beyond one slave's suit for "freeman" status by declaring that ALL blacks--freemen as well as slaves--were not, and never could become, U.S. citizens, bringing an end to the 1820 Missouri Compromise, while also resulting in the outrage that led to the Civil War.
Download or read book Prigg v Pennsylvania written by H. Robert Baker and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2012-10-03 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Morgan was born in freedom's shadow. Her parents were slaves of John Ashmore, a prosperous Maryland mill owner who freed many of his slaves in the last years of his life. Ashmore never laid claim to Margaret, who eventually married a free black man and moved to Pennsylvania. Then, John Ashmore's widow sent Edward Prigg to Pennsylvania to claim Margaret as a runaway. Prigg seized Margaret and her children-one of them born in Pennsylvania-and forcibly removed them to Maryland in violation of Pennsylvania law. In the ensuing uproar, Prigg was indicted for kidnapping under Pennsylvania's personal liberty law. Maryland, however, blocked his extradition, setting the stage for a remarkable Supreme Court case in 1842. In Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court considered more than just the fate of a single slavecatcher. The Court's majority struck down the free states' personal liberty laws and reaffirmed federal supremacy in determining the procedures for fugitive slave rendition. H. Robert Baker has written the first and only book-length treatment of this landmark case that became a pivot point for antebellum politics and law some fifteen years before Dred Scott. Baker addresses the Constitution's ambivalence regarding slavery and freedom. At issue were the reach of slaveholders' property rights into the free states, the rights of free blacks, and the relative powers of the federal and state governments. By announcing federal supremacy in regulating fugitive slave rendition, Prigg v. Pennsylvania was meant to bolster what slaveholders claimed as a constitutional right. But the decision cast into doubt the ability of free states to define freedom and to protect their free black populations from kidnapping. Baker's eye-opening account raises crucial questions about the place of slavery in the Constitution and the role of the courts in protecting it in antebellum America. More than that, it demonstrates how judges fashion conflicting constitutional interpretations from the same sources of law. Ultimately, it offers an instructive look at how constitutional interpretation that claims to be faithful to neutral legal principles and a definitive original meaning is nonetheless freighted with contemporary politics and morality. Prigg v. Pennsylvania is a sobering lesson for those concerned with today's controversial issues, as states seek to supplement and preempt federal immigration law or to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Download or read book American Confluence written by Stephen Aron and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new history of Missouri--the region where the American West begins.
Download or read book Privateers of the Americas written by David Head (Ph. D.) and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Privateers of the Americas examines raids on Spanish shipping conducted from the United States during the early 1800s. These activities were sanctioned by, and conducted on behalf of, republics in Spanish America aspiring to independence from Spain. Among the available histories of privateering, there is no comparable work. Because privateering further complicated international dealings during the already tumultuous Age of Revolution, the book also offers a new perspective on the diplomatic and Atlantic history of the early American republic. Seafarers living in the United States secured commissions from Spanish American nations, attacked Spanish vessels, and returned to sell their captured cargoes (which sometimes included slaves) from bases in Baltimore, New Orleans, and Galveston and on AmeliaIsland. Privateers sold millions of dollars of goods to untold numbers of ordinary Americans. Their collective enterprise involved more than a hundred vessels and thousands of people—not only ships’ crews but also investors, merchants, suppliers, and others. They angered foreign diplomats, worried American officials, and muddied U.S. foreign relations. David Head looks at how Spanish American privateering worked and who engaged in it; how the U.S. government responded; how privateers and their supporters evaded or exploited laws and international relations; what motivated men to choose this line of work; and ultimately, what it meant to them to sail for the new republics of Spanish America. His findings broaden our understanding of the experience of being an American in a wider world. DAVID HEAD is an assistantprofessor of history at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. Cover design: Erin Kirk New Cover illustration: Early American Places logo The University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602 www.ugapress.org ISBN (paper) 978-0-8203-4864-3
Download or read book The Dred Scott Case written by Don Edward Fehrenbacher and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, The Dred Scott Case is a masterful examination of the most famous example of judicial failure--the case referred to as "the most frequently overturned decision in history."On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Supreme Court's decision against Dred Scott, a slave who maintained he had been emancipated as a result of having lived with his master in the free state of Illinois and in federal territory where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise. The decision did much more than resolve the fate of an elderly black man and his family: Dred Scott v. Sanford was the first instance in which the Supreme Court invalidated a major piece of federal legislation. The decision declared that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories, thereby striking a severe blow at the the legitimacy of the emerging Republican party and intensifying the sectional conflict over slavery.This book represents a skillful review of the issues before America on the eve of the Civil War. The first third of the book deals directly with the with the case itself and the Court's decision, while the remainder puts the legal and judicial question of slavery into the broadest possible American context. Fehrenbacher discusses the legal bases of slavery, the debate over the Constitution, and the dispute over slavery and continental expansion. He also considers the immediate and long-range consequences of the decision.
Download or read book The Negro Motorist Green Book written by Victor H. Green and published by Colchis Books. This book was released on with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Negro Motorist Green Book was a groundbreaking guide that provided African American travelers with crucial information on safe places to stay, eat, and visit during the era of segregation in the United States. This essential resource, originally published from 1936 to 1966, offered a lifeline to black motorists navigating a deeply divided nation, helping them avoid the dangers and indignities of racism on the road. More than just a travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book stands as a powerful symbol of resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, offering a poignant glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the African American experience in the 20th century.
Download or read book Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy written by Moon-Kie Jung and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Racism has never been simple. It wasn't more obvious in the past, and it isn't less potent now. From the birth of the United States to the contemporary police shooting death of an unarmed Black youth, Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy investigates ingrained practices of racism, as well as unquestioned assumptions in the study of racism, to upend and deepen our understanding. In Moon-Kie Jung's unsettling book, Dred Scott v. Sandford, the notorious 1857 Supreme Court case, casts a shadow over current immigration debates and the "war on terror." The story of a 1924 massacre of Filipino sugar workers in Hawai'i pairs with statistical relentlessness of Black economic suffering to shed light on hidden dimensions of mass ignorance and indifference. The histories of Asians, Blacks, Latina/os, and Natives relate in knotty ways. State violence and colonialism come to the fore in taking measure of the United States, past and present, while the undue importance of assimilation and colorblindness recedes. Ultimately, Jung challenges the dominant racial common sense and develops new concepts and theory for radically rethinking and resisting racisms.
Download or read book The Long Lingering Shadow written by Robert J. Cottrol and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students of American history know of the law’s critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere. Ranging across such topics as slavery, emancipation, scientific racism, immigration policies, racial classifications, and legal processes, Cottrol unravels a complex odyssey. By the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. slave system was rooted in a legal and cultural foundation of racial exclusion unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. That system’s legacy was later echoed in Jim Crow, the practice of legally mandated segregation. Jim Crow in turn caused leading Latin Americans to regard their nations as models of racial equality because their laws did not mandate racial discrimination— a belief that masked very real patterns of racism throughout the Americas. And yet, Cottrol says, if the United States has had a history of more-rigid racial exclusion, since the Second World War it has also had a more thorough civil rights revolution, with significant legal victories over racial discrimination. Cottrol explores this remarkable transformation and shows how it is now inspiring civil rights activists throughout the Americas.
Download or read book The Long Shadow of the Civil War written by Victoria E. Bynum and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Long Shadow of the Civil War relates uncommon narratives about common Southern folks who fought not with the Confederacy, but against it. Focusing on regions in three Southern states--North Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas--Victoria E. Bynum introduces Unionist supporters, guerrilla soldiers, defiant women, socialists, populists, free blacks, and large interracial kin groups that belie stereotypes of Southerners as uniformly supportive of the Confederate cause. Centered on the concepts of place, family, and community, Bynum's insightful and carefully documented work effectively counters the idea of a unified South caught in the grip of the Lost Cause.
