A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
-
The story of the longest and most complex legal challenge to slavery in American history
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.
- Copyright:
- 2020
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 432 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780300256277
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- Date of Addition:
- 11/24/20
- Copyrighted By:
- William G. Thomas Iii
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction, Social Studies, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.