Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them, 1763-1865 PDF Download

Author: Harriet C. Frazier
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786418299
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
From the beginning of French rule of Missouri in 1720 through this state's abolition of slavery in 1865, liberty was always the goal of the vast majority of its enslaved people. The presence in eastern Kansas of a host of abolitionists from New England made slaveholding risky business. Many religiously devout persons were imprisoned in Missouri for "slave stealing." Based largely on old newspapers, prison records, pardon papers, and other archival materials, this book is an account of the legal and physical obstacles that slaves faced in their quest for freedom and of the consequences suffered by persons who tried to help them. Attitudes of both slave holders and abolitionists are examined, as is the institution's protection in both the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. The book discusses the experiences of particular individuals and examines the Underground Railroad on Missouri's borders. Appendices provide details from two Spanish colonial census reports, a list of abolitionist prison inmates with details about their time served, and the percentages of African Americans still in bondage in 16 jurisdictions from 1820 to 1860.

Author: Dale Edwyna Smith
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476666830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
The African American presence in St. Louis began in 1763 with the arrival of several free men of color who accompanied Pierre Laclede from New Orleans to set up a fur trading fort on the Mississippi. Within a few decades, the fort had become a prosperous commercial center whose proximity to the western frontier attracted a cosmopolitan community. African Americans in St. Louis--both slave and free--enjoyed greater autonomy and opportunity than those in urban areas of the South and East. Slaves in the city set legal precedent by filing hundreds of freedom suits, often based on the prohibition against slavery set by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. After a century in the region, many blacks enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the author studies the history of slaves and free blacks in this city.

Author: Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317454154
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1918

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Book Description
The culmination of years of research in dozens of archives and libraries, this fascinating encyclopedia provides an unprecedented look at the network known as the Underground Railroad - that mysterious "system" of individuals and organizations that helped slaves escape the American South to freedom during the years before the Civil War. In operation as early as the 1500s and reaching its peak with the abolitionist movement of the antebellum period, the Underground Railroad saved countless lives and helped alter the course of American history. This is the most complete reference on the Underground Railroad ever published. It includes full coverage of the Railroad in both the United States and Canada, which was the ultimate destination of many of the escaping slaves. "The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations" explores the people, places, writings, laws, and organizations that made this network possible. More than 1,500 entries detail the families and personalities involved in the operation, and sidebars extract primary source materials for longer entries. This encyclopedia features extensive supporting materials, including maps with actual Underground Railroad escape routes, photos, a chronology, genealogies of those involved in the operation, a listing of Underground Railroad operatives by state or Canadian province, a "passenger" list of escaping slaves, and primary and secondary source bibliographies.

Author: Lea Vandervelde
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199927294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
There is no more legendary case in American legal history than Dred Scott v. Sanford. An extraordinary example of a slave suing his master for freedom, it led to a devastating pro-slavery ruling by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Supreme Court and helped precipitate the Civil War. With deep appreciation for the courage required for a slave to challenge a master in court, VanVelde reshapes our understanding of border-state slavery and the impact of the seemingly powerless on American law.

Author: Sara M. Benson
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520296966
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Built in the 1890s at the center of the nation, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was designed specifically to be a replica of the US Capitol Building. But why? The Prison of Democracy explains the political significance of a prison built to mimic one of America’s monuments to democracy. Locating Leavenworth in memory, history, and law, the prison geographically sits at the borders of Indian Territory (1825–1854) and Bleeding Kansas (1854–1864), both sites of contestation over slavery and freedom. Author Sara M. Benson argues that Leavenworth reshaped the design of punishment in America by gradually normalizing state-inflicted violence against citizens. Leavenworth’s peculiar architecture illustrates the real roots of mass incarceration—as an explicitly race- and nation-building system that has been ingrained in the very fabric of US history rather than as part of a recent post-war racial history. The book sheds light on the truth of the painful relationship between the carceral state and democracy in the US—a relationship that thrives to this day.

Author: Aaron Astor
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807142999
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Explores the sectional conflict at the border of the North and the Confederate South during the Civil War and Reconstruction, discussing how black citizenship and voting rights instigated political conflicts and racial violence.

Author: Frederick Douglass
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300218303
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 715

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Book Description
A second volume of the collected correspondence of the great African-American reformer and abolitionist features correspondence written during the Civil War years The second collection of meticulously edited correspondence with abolitionist, author, statesman, and former slave Frederick Douglass covers the years leading up to the Civil War through the close of the conflict, offering readers an illuminating portrait of an extraordinary American and the turbulent times in which he lived. An important contribution to historical scholarship, the documents offer fascinating insights into the abolitionist movement during wartime and the author's relationship to Abraham Lincoln and other prominent figures of the era.

Author: Kelly Marie Kennington
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820345520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
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.

Author: Lea VanderVelde
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019975408X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
In telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom. --from publisher description.

Author: Kristen Epps
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820350508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Slavery on the Periphery focuses on nineteen counties on the Kansas-Missouri border, tracing slavery's rise and fall from the earliest years of American settlement through the Civil War along this critical geographical, political, and social fault line.