Bibliograph

Slavery on trial, law, abolitionism, and print culture, Jeannine Marie DeLombard

Type

Label

Slavery on trial, law, abolitionism, and print culture, Jeannine Marie DeLombard

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Slavery on trial

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Jeannine Marie DeLombard

Series statement

Studies in legal history

Sub title

law, abolitionism, and print culture

Summary

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

Target audience

adult

Classification