Before Dred Scott : slavery and legal culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857

Author / Creator

Twitty, Anne Silverwood, 1980- author

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Summary

" ... Draws on the freedom suits filed in the St. Louis circuit court to construct a ground-breaking history of slavery and legal culture within the American Confluence, a vast region where the Ohi...

" ... Draws on the freedom suits filed in the St. Louis circuit court to construct a ground-breaking history of slavery and legal culture within the American Confluence, a vast region where the Ohio,, Mississippi, and the Missouri rivers converge. Formally divided between slave and free territories and states, the American Confluence was nevertheless a site where the borders between slavery and freedom, like the borders within the region itself, were fluid. Such ambiguity produced a radical indeterminacy of status, which, in turn, gave rise to a distinctive legal culture made manifest by the prosecution of hundreds of freedom suits, including the case that ultimately culminated in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Sandford (1847)."--Page [i].

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