The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North

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
In this intriguing book, Hendrik Hartog uses a forgotten 1840 case to explore the regime of gradual emancipation that took place in New Jersey over the first half of the nineteenth century. In Minna's case, white people fought over who would pay for the costs of caring for a dependent, apparently enslaved, woman. Hartog marks how the peculiar language mobilized by the debate—about care as a "mere voluntary courtesy"—became routine in a wide range of subsequent cases about "good Samaritans." Using Minna's case as a springboard, Hartog explores the statutes, situations, and conflicts that helped produce a regime where slavery was usually but not always legal and where a supposedly enslaved person may or may not have been legally free.In exploring this liminal and unsettled legal space, Hartog sheds light on the relationships between moral and legal reasoning and a legal landscape that challenges simplistic notions of what it meant to live in freedom. What emerges is a provocative portrait of a distant legal order that, in its contradictions and moral dilemmas, bears an ironic resemblance to our own legal world.
Copyright:
2018

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
208 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781469640891
Related ISBNs:
9781469640907, 9781469661476, 9781469640884
Publisher:
The University of North Carolina Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
University of North Carolina Press
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.

Reviews

No Rating Yet