Question of Freedom - The Families Who Challenged Slavery From Nations Founding to Civil

"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."--Provided by publisher.

About the author

William G. Thomas III is the John and Catherine Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of Nebraska. He is co-founder and was director of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia.

Product details

• Authors: William G. Thomas, Thomas William G.
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2020
• EAN: 9780300234121
• ISBN: 978-0-300-23412-1
• No. of pages: 432
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Law > General, dictionaries; USA, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, LAW / Legal History, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Slavery, HISTORY / United States / 19th Century, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, Local History, Legal History, United States of America, USA, History of the Americas, Slavery & abolition of slavery, Northeastern & North Atlantic States, Slavery and abolition of slavery, US Northeast: Mid-Atlantic States