Nothing More than Freedom
The Failure of Abolition in American Law

Reveals that slavery has remained embedded in private law well after its ostensible demise.

Giuliana Perrone (Author)

9781009219198, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 May 2023

280 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.6 cm, 0.65 kg

'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

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.

Introduction: an abolitionist vision
1. The contract controversy
2. 'Wreck and ruin'
3. 'By force it was destroyed'
4. Confederate reckonings
5. Life after the death of slavery
6. 'Back into the days of slavery'
7. 'The grave question'
8. Final failure
Epilogue: an abolitionist revision.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]