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In these absorbing accounts of five court cases, Jason A. Gilmer
offers intimate glimpses into Texas society in the time of slavery.
Each story unfolds along boundaries - between men and women, slave
and free, black and white, rich and poor, old and young - as rigid
social orders are upset in ways that drive people into the
courtroom.,br> One case involves a settler in a rural county
along the Colorado River, his thirty-year relationship with an
enslaved woman, and the claims of their children as heirs. A case
in East Texas arose after an owner refused to pay an overseer who
had shot one of her slaves. Another case details how a free family
of color carved out a life in the sparsely populated marshland of
Southeast Texas, only to lose it all as waves of new settlers
"civilized" the county. An enslaved woman in Galveston who was set
free in her owner's will - and who got an uncommon level of support
from her attorneys - is the subject of another case. In a Central
Texas community, as another case recounts, citizens forced a
Choctaw native into court in an effort to gain freedom for his
slave, a woman who easily "passed" as white. The cases considered
here include Gaines v. Thomas, Clark v. Honey, Brady v. Price, and
Webster v. Heard. All of them pitted communal attitudes and values
against the exigencies of daily life in an often harsh place. Here
are real people in their own words, as gathered from trial records,
various legal documents, and many other sources. People of many
colors, from diverse backgrounds, weave their way in and out of the
narratives. We come to know what mattered most to them - and where
those personal concerns stood before the law.
In these absorbing accounts of five court cases, Jason A. Gilmer
offers intimate glimpses into Texas society in the time of slavery.
Each story unfolds along boundaries - between men and women, slave
and free, black and white, rich and poor, old and young - as rigid
social orders are upset in ways that drive people into the
courtroom.,br> One case involves a settler in a rural county
along the Colorado River, his thirty-year relationship with an
enslaved woman, and the claims of their children as heirs. A case
in East Texas arose after an owner refused to pay an overseer who
had shot one of her slaves. Another case details how a free family
of color carved out a life in the sparsely populated marshland of
Southeast Texas, only to lose it all as waves of new settlers
"civilized" the county. An enslaved woman in Galveston who was set
free in her owner's will - and who got an uncommon level of support
from her attorneys - is the subject of another case. In a Central
Texas community, as another case recounts, citizens forced a
Choctaw native into court in an effort to gain freedom for his
slave, a woman who easily "passed" as white. The cases considered
here include Gaines v. Thomas, Clark v. Honey, Brady v. Price, and
Webster v. Heard. All of them pitted communal attitudes and values
against the exigencies of daily life in an often harsh place. Here
are real people in their own words, as gathered from trial records,
various legal documents, and many other sources. People of many
colors, from diverse backgrounds, weave their way in and out of the
narratives. We come to know what mattered most to them - and where
those personal concerns stood before the law.
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