Overview

Nothing More than Freedom explores the long and complex legal history of Black freedom in the United States. From the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 until the end of Reconstruction in 1877, supreme courts in former slave states decided approximately 700 lawsuits associated with the struggle for Black freedom and equal citizenship. This litigation – the majority through private law – triggered questions about American liberty and reassessed the nation's legal and political order following the Civil War. Judicial decisions set the terms of debates about racial identity, civil rights, and national belonging, and established that slavery, as a legal institution and social practice, remained actionable in American law well after its ostensible demise. The verdicts determined how unresolved facets of slavery would undercut ongoing efforts for abolition and the realization of equality. Insightful and compelling, this work makes an important intervention in the history of post-Civil War law.

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9781009219198

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'The monumental history of Emancipation and Reconstruction is irresistible, but it can be deceptive. Giuliana Perrone directs us to the quieter lanes of American common law discourse, where the bitter realities of abolition's adjudication are to be found - the 'smaller, private legal matters' that piled up routinely, remorselessly, in the shadow of slavery. Those of us who wonder at Reconstruction's rejection and Emancipation's dire legacy can learn much from this eloquent history of legal failure.' Christopher Tomlins, author of In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History 'Nothing More Than Freedom is the first comprehensive history of state appellate law, where the afterlife of slavery lasted for decades. Giuliana Perrone shows us that even the supposed common-law rights of property and contract were limited by previous enslavement across former slave states, where the badges of servitude outlived emancipation.' Ariela Gross, co-author of Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana 'Nothing More than Freedom is a fresh and provocative take on legal change at a crucial juncture in American history. Judges who confronted slavery's demise in the aftermath of the Civil War made active choices about whether to adjust legal rules to accommodate this transformation in minimal ways or to root the edifice of slavery entirely out of the law.' Cynthia Nicoletti, author of Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis 'Perrone delivers an unflinching look at how American judges perpetuated the vestiges of slavery through state-based private law, fatally undermining the abolitionist promise of the Reconstruction Amendments. Now, when so many are entranced by the fiction of colorblindness, Perrone's excavation of ongoing slavery-based logics in American law and commerce is a welcome counterpoint.' Dylan C. Penningroth, author of The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South

Author Information

Giuliana Perrone is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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