An analysis of slave and slaveholder understanding and manipulation of formal legal systems in the region known as the American Confluence during the antebellum era.

Résumé
Appealing to legal historians and scholars, this antebellum history uses original legal suits to analyse the understanding, use, and adaptation of formal law by slave holders and slaves within the American Confluence, an area of liminal boundaries where the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers converge.

Contenu

Introduction; 1. A radical indeterminacy of status; 2. 'With the ease of a veteran litigant'; 3. '[B]y the help of God and a good lawyer'; 4. Slavery from liberty to equality; 5. '[W]orking his emancipation'; 6. Exploiting the uncertainties of federalism; 7. Remembering slavery and freedom in the American Confluence; Conclusion; Acknowledgements; Appendix.