A Question of Freedom - The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War (Hardcover)

Winner of the Mark Lynton Prize in History-the story of the longest and most complex legal challenge to slavery in American history "A rich, roiling history that Thomas recounts with eloquence and skill. . . . The very existence of freedom suits assumed that slavery could only be circumscribed and local; what Thomas shows in his illuminating book is how this view was eventually turned upside down in decisions like Dred Scott. 'Freedom was local,' Thomas writes. 'Slavery was national.'"-Jennifer Szalai, New York Times "Gripping. . . . Profound and prodigiously researched."-Alison L. LaCroix, Washington Post For over seventy years and five generations, the enslaved families of Prince George's County, Maryland, filed hundreds of suits for their freedom against a powerful circle of slaveholders, taking their cause all the way to the Supreme Court. Between 1787 and 1861, these lawsuits challenged the legitimacy of slavery in American law and put slavery on trial in the nation's capital. Piecing together evidence once dismissed in court and buried in the archives, William Thomas tells an intricate and intensely human story of the enslaved families (the Butlers, Queens, Mahoneys, and others), their lawyers (among them a young Francis Scott Key), and the slaveholders who fought to defend slavery, beginning with the Jesuit priests who held some of the largest plantations in the nation and founded a college at Georgetown. A Question of Freedom asks us to reckon with the moral problem of slavery and its legacies in the present day.

General

Imprint:	Yale University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	October 2020
Authors:	William G. Thomas
Dimensions:	235 x 156 x 29mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth over boards
Pages:	432
ISBN-13:	978-0-300-23412-1
Categories:	Books > Law > Jurisprudence & general issues > Legal history Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1750 to 1900 Books > Humanities > History > American history > General Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Slavery & emancipation Books > History > American history > General Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
LSN:	0-300-23412-0
Barcode:	9780300234121

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