Slavery on Trial: Law, Abolitionism, and Print Culture (Studies in Legal History) - Softcover

Delombard, Jeannine Marie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807858129 ISBN 13: 9780807858127

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007

Synopsis

America's legal consciousness was high during the era that saw the imprisonment of abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison, the execution of slave revolutionary Nat Turner, and the hangings of John Brown and his Harpers Ferry co-conspirators. Jeannine Marie DeLombard examines how debates over slavery in the three decades before the Civil War employed legal language to "try" the case for slavery in the court of public opinion via popular print media.

Discussing autobiographies by Frederick Douglass, a scandal narrative about Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist speech by Henry David Thoreau, sentimental fiction by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a proslavery novel by William MacCreary Burwell, DeLombard argues that American literature of the era cannot be fully understood without an appreciation for the slavery debate in the courts and in print. Combining legal, literary, and book history approaches, Slavery on Trial provides a refreshing alternative to the official perspectives offered by the nation's founding documents, legal treatises, statutes, and judicial decisions. DeLombard invites us to view the intersection of slavery and law as so many antebellum Americans did--through the lens of popular print culture.

About this title

Book Description

"The depth and breadth of . . . research and discerning literary comments are . . . impressive."-- The Historian

From the Inside Flap

DeLombard examines how debates over slavery in the three decades before the Civil War employed legal language to "try" the case for slavery in the court of public opinion via popular print media. The country's legal consciousness was high during the era that saw the imprisonment of abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison, the execution of slave revolutionary Nat Turner, and the hangings of John Brown and his Harpers Ferry coconspirators. DeLombard discusses how this consciousness was evident in the "trials" over slavery found in the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass, a scandal narrative about Sojourner Truth, a speech by Henry David Thoreau, fiction by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a proslavery novel by William McCreary Burwell.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0807858129
• ISBN 13: 9780807858127
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 344