Neither Fugitive nor Free : Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel / Edlie L. Wong.
Wong, Edlie L., author.
2009
PS217.S55
Available Online

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Title Neither Fugitive nor Free : Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel / Edlie L. Wong.
Author Wong, Edlie L., author.
ISBN 9780814795460
DOI https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814794555.001.0001
Published New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2009]
Copyright ©2009
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource : 15 black and white illustrations
Other Standard Identifiers 10.18574/nyu/9780814794555.001.0001 doi
Call Number PS217.S55
Dewey Decimal Classification 810.93552
Summary Neither Fugitive nor Free draws on the freedom suit as recorded in the press and court documents to offer a critically and historically engaged understanding of the freedom celebrated in the literary and cultural histories of transatlantic abolitionism. Freedom suits involved those enslaved valets, nurses, and maids who accompanied slaveholders onto free soil. Once brought into a free jurisdiction, these attendants became informally free, even if they were taken back to a slave jurisdiction-at least according to abolitionists and the enslaved themselves. In order to secure their freedom formally, slave attendants or others on their behalf had to bring suit in a court of law.Edlie Wong critically recuperates these cases in an effort to reexamine and redefine the legal construction of freedom, will, and consent. This study places such historically central anti-slavery figures as Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, and William Lloyd Garrison alongside such lesser-known slave plaintiffs as Lucy Ann Delaney, Grace, Catharine Linda, Med, and Harriet Robinson Scott. Situated at the confluence of literary criticism, feminism, and legal history, Neither Fugitive nor Free presents the freedom suit as a "new" genre to African American and American literary studies.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Series America and the Long 19th Century ; ; 8
In New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780814794562
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
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Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Emancipation after "the Laws of Englishmen"
2 Choosing Kin in Antislavery Literature and Law
3 The Gender of Freedom before Dred Scott
4 The Crime of Color in the Negro Seamen Acts
Conclusion
Notes
Index
About the Author

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