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Roadblocks to Freedom - Slavery and Manumission in the United States South (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,506
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Roadblocks to Freedom - Slavery and Manumission in the United States South (Hardcover)
Series: Legal History and Biography
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"ROADBLOCKS TO FREEDOM is a must read for anyone interested in the
legal history of slavery in the American South. Exhaustively
researched, the study picks apart, categorizes, and contextualizes
hundreds of cases and statutes addressing the efforts and abilities
of slaves to obtain their freedom and of masters to manumit those
they held in bondage. Fede's comprehensive analysis is matched only
by his careful attention to detail, painting a deeply nuanced
picture of the competing social, political, economic, and legal
interests at play when a slave's potential for liberty was at
stake." - JASON GILLMER, Professor of Law and John J. Hemmingson
Chair in Civil Liberties, Gonzaga University - "ROADBLOCKS TO
FREEDOM is the most comprehensive study of the law of manumission
ever written. Fede has examined and analyzed hundreds of cases and
statutes from the antebellum South, and provided a coherent
framework for understanding the complex legal issues that arose
when masters tried to voluntarily free their slaves. This book
provides a solid and important resource for all scholars in the
field. All of us in the field are indebted to Fede for this
tremendous research and analysis." - PAUL FINKELMAN, President
William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law, Albany Law School
- Andrew Fede's new book considers the law of freedom suits and
manumission from the point-of-view of legal procedure, evidence
rules, damage awards, and trial practice-in addition to the
abstract principles stated in the appellate decisions. The author
shows that procedural and evidentiary barricades made it
increasingly impossible for many slaves, or free blacks who were
wrongfully held as slaves, to litigate their freedom. Even some of
the most celebrated cases in which the courts freed slaves must be
read as tempered by the legal realities the actors faced or the
courts actually recognized in the process. Slave owners in almost
all slave societies had the right to manumit their slaves. Slavery
law also permitted people to win their freedom if they were held as
slaves contrary to law. Fede provides a comprehensive view of how
some enslaved litigants won their freedom in the court-and how many
others, like Dred and Harriet Scott, did not because of the
substantive and procedural barriers that both judges and
legislators placed in the way of people held in slavery who sought
their freedom in court. From the 17th century to the Civil War,
Southern governments built roadblock after roadblock to the freedom
sought by deserving enslaved people, even if this restricted the
masters' rights to free their slaves or defied settled law. They
increasingly prohibited all manumissions and added layers of
procedure to those seeking freedom-while eventually providing a
streamlined process by which free blacks "voluntarily" enslaved
themselves and their children. Drawing on his three decades of
legal experience to take seriously the trial process and rules
under which slave freedom cases were decided, Fede considers how
slave owners, slaves, and lawyers caused legal change from the
bottom up.
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