1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786578603321

Autore

Wong Edlie L.

Titolo

Neither Fugitive nor Free : Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel / / Edlie L. Wong

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, NY : , : New York University Press, , [2009]

©2009

ISBN

0-8147-9546-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (348 p.)

Collana

America and the Long 19th Century ; ; 8

Disciplina

810.93552

Soggetti

Law in literature

Slavery in literature

Law and literature - United States - History - 19th century

Slavery - Law and legislation - United States - History - 19th century

Antislavery movements - United States - History - 19th century

Enslaved persons - Legal status, laws, etc - United States - History - 19th century

American literature - African American authors - History and criticism

American literature - 19th century - History and criticism

Slave narratives - History and criticism

Black people - Travel - History - 19th century

Enslaved persons - Travel - History - 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Emancipation after “the Laws of Englishmen” -- 2 Choosing Kin in Antislavery Literature and Law -- 3 The Gender of Freedom before Dred Scott -- 4 The Crime of Color in the Negro Seamen Acts -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author

Sommario/riassunto

Neither Fugitive nor Free draws on the freedom suit as recorded in the press and court documents to offer a critically and historically engaged understanding of the freedom celebrated in the literary and cultural histories of transatlantic abolitionism. Freedom suits involved those enslaved valets, nurses, and maids who accompanied slaveholders onto



free soil. Once brought into a free jurisdiction, these attendants became informally free, even if they were taken back to a slave jurisdiction—at least according to abolitionists and the enslaved themselves. In order to secure their freedom formally, slave attendants or others on their behalf had to bring suit in a court of law. Edlie Wong critically recuperates these cases in an effort to reexamine and redefine the legal construction of freedom, will, and consent. This study places such historically central anti-slavery figures as Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, and William Lloyd Garrison alongside such lesser-known slave plaintiffs as Lucy Ann Delaney, Grace, Catharine Linda, Med, and Harriet Robinson Scott. Situated at the confluence of literary criticism, feminism, and legal history, Neither Fugitive nor Free presents the freedom suit as a "new" genre to African American and American literary studies.