Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott

"This gave my mother an immense amount of trouble, but she had girded up her loins for the fight, and, knowing that she was right, was resolved, by the help of God and a good lawyer, to win my case against all opposition." - Lucy A. Delaney., "From the Darkness Cometh the Light"This is a really interesting book that covers about a dozen of approximately 300 "freedom suits" that took place in St Louis in the early- to mid-1800s, almost all before the infamous Dred Scott decision. The documentation of the suits has been collected, collated, and digitized in the past several years, and anyone can see the original documents at the St Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project at stlcourtrecords dot wustl dot eduEach of the cases is very interesting from so many angles - the judges, the lawyers, the slaveholding defendants, the enslaved plaintiffs, St Louis and Illinois history, state, federal, and territorial law, the frontier, international law, and much more. I knew some about the slaveholding sympathies in downstate Illinois from reading about Abraham Lincoln's role in the Matson Slave Trial, but the facts of institutionalized slavery in a supposedly "free state" is made very clear in this book - likewise, the irony of a good number of successful freedom suits in the courts of a slaveholding city, such as St Louis. There is a lot of tragedy here, with murders, kidnappings, mistreatment, etc., on top of the horrors of slavery. But also a lot of inspiration in the agency shown by enslaved persons to courageously press for their freedom against a slaveholding oligarchy, especially the power and generational vendettas of the Choteau family - founders of St Louis - against slaves seeking their freedomA few things kept me from giving this 5 stars - a) the presentation here of isolated cases is necessarily anecdotal, and the summary at the end is pretty cursory - there are two other book sin just the past few months/year that seem to take more of a synthesis approach and comparing the experience of St Louis claimants to courtroom experiences around the country - I look forward to reading those; b) though it didn't detract from the quality of the scholarship, the copyediting throughout, esp. in the last 25%, is sloppy enough to be distracting; and c) the author's metaphor of "redemption songs" was forced and strained in the introduction and the closing chapters - but was not pressed in the heart of the book, which was goodHighly Recommended

This book is a powerful, readable history of slaves' century-long fight for freedom--a fight that began long before Dred Scott decision and the Civil War that followed. VanderVelde spent years in courthouse archives to catalog over three hundred "freedom suits" brought by slaves suing their masters for freedom--revealing a remarkable record of success for slaves despite the odds against them. But this book is far more than a statistical account of these cases. The author dives deep into twelve of those lawsuits, uncovering stories about life and law in antebellum America. Every lawsuit is revelatory, bringing to light details of everyday lives at the border of freedom and slavery. Each of these cases also involved enormous risk and potential huge rewards for the slave. And every case forced the white judges and lawyers to grapple with the intersection between the rule of law and the immorality of slavery. This remarkable history changed my understanding of the Dred Scott decision and the meaning of law and liberty in antebellum America.For those interested in this era, I also highly recommend Mrs. Dred Scott, VanderVelde's groundbreaking account of Dred Scott's wife, Harriet Scott, whose story had been lost to history before VanderVelde unearthed it.