Williams'' Gang - A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts

Williams' Gang explores a Washington, DC slave trader's legal misadventures associated with transporting convict slaves through New Orleans. Drawing on court records, newspapers, governors' files, slave narratives, and penitentiary data, Jeff Forret examines slave criminality, the coastwise domestic slave trade, and Southern jurisprudence.

List of contents

Introduction: the slave depot of Washington, DC; 1. An ambush; 2. The Yellow House; 3. Sale and transportation; 4. Mobile to New Orleans; 5. Legal troubles; 6. The Millington Bank; 7. State v. Williams; 8. Slave trading in 'hard times'; 9. Politics of the slave pen; 10. Brothers; 11. The Louisiana State Penitentiary; 12. Closure; 13. Perseverance; 14. Violet; Epilogue: the legal legacy of the domestic slave trade.

About the author

Jeff Forret is Professor of History at Lamar University, Texas. He won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for his book Slave against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South (2015) and has authored Race Relations at the Margins: Slaves and Poor Whites in the Antebellum Southern Countryside (2006), among other works.

Summary

Williams' Gang explores a Washington, DC slave trader's legal misadventures associated with transporting convict slaves through New Orleans. Drawing on court records, newspapers, governors' files, slave narratives, and penitentiary data, Jeff Forret examines slave criminality, the coastwise domestic slave trade, and Southern jurisprudence.

Product details

• Authors: Jeff Forret, Jeff (Lamar University Forret, Forret Jeff
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2021
• EAN: 9781108730365
• ISBN: 978-1-108-73036-5
• No. of pages: 484
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Law > General, dictionaries; HISTORY / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies), LAW / Legal History, c 1500 onwards to present day, Legal History, History of the Americas, Modern Period, C 1500 Onwards