SUING FOR FREEDOM: SLAVERY AND THE LAW IN EARLY AMERICA During the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, enslaved people challenged
their status in court. They devised legal strategies, studied law, and
worked with lawyers to gain freedom in jurisdictions throughout the
colonial era and early national republic. This presentation by Dr.
Honor Sachs follows the story of one extended slave family in Virginia
who initiated dozens of freedom suits over multiple generations
between the American Revolution and the 1820s, claiming freedom by
reason of Native American descent. Although this family worked with
some of the nation’s most famous lawyers – including Thomas
Jefferson and John Marshall – their story has remained largely
unknown. This talk reveals hidden stories about slavery, law, and
family in early America.
Honor Sachs is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of
Colorado Boulder. She is the author of _Home Rule: Households,
Manhood, and National Expansion on the Eighteenth-Century Kentucky
Frontier_ (2015.) Her teaching covers early America broadly, with
particular focus on the revolutionary and founding eras, histories of
race and slavery, legal and constitutional history, and histories of
family, genealogy, and memory.
education
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25/02/2020 Last update