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Zusatztext In a remarkable act of historical recovery, VanderVelde resurrects the life of Harriet Scott. Informationen zum Autor Lea VanderVelde is Josephine Witte Professor of Law at the University of Iowa. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. Klappentext 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 Zusammenfassung Among the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford . Despite the case's signal importance as a turning point in America's history, the lives of the slave litigants have receded to the margins of the record, as conventional accounts have focused on the case's judges and lawyers. 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. A remarkable piece of historical detective work, Mrs. Dred Scott chronicles Harriet's life from her adolescence on the 1830s Minnesota-Wisconsin frontier, to slavery-era St. Louis, through the eleven years of legal wrangling that ended with the high court's notorious decision. The book not only recovers her story, but also reveals that Harriet may well have been the lynchpin in this pivotal episode in American legal history. Reconstructing Harriet Scott's life through innovative readings of journals, military records, court dockets, and even frontier store ledgers, VanderVelde offers a stunningly detailed account that is at once a rich portrait of slave life, an engrossing legal drama, and a provocative reassessment of a central event in U.S. constitutional history. More than a biography, the book is a deep social history that freshly illuminates some of the major issues confronting antebellum America, including the status of women, slaves, Free Blacks, and Native Americans. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1: Wife of a Celebrity 2: 1835: Arriving on the Frontier 3: Settling In 4: Entertaining Guests at the Indian Agency 5: Late Summer Harvest 6: Wintering Over at St. Peter's Agency 7: Winters Deep 8: The Change of the Guard 9: Celestial Explorers 10: The Call of the Wood as a Prelude to Treaty 11: A Treaty Made before Her Eyes 12: The Master Departs, Together Alone 13: Traveling the Length of the River 14: New Baby in a New Land 15: The Deteriorating Community 16: Battles and Baptisms 17: Taliaferro's Last Stand 18: Leaving Minnesota Trying Courts: The Justice of Frontier Trials 19: While the Doctor was Away: St. Louis, 1840-43 20: The House of Chouteau 21: Black Social Life of St. Louis 22: The Doctor Returns 23: 1843 Interlude: Jeff Barracks between Wars of National Expansion 24: Harriet and Her Children in St. Louis 25: The Courthouse and the Jail 26: Other Matters at the Courthouse 27: Filing Suit Again 28: Trial by Pestilence, Trial by Fire 29: Declared Free 30: Missouri Changes its Course 31: Before the High Court ...
