Suing for Freedom

Course Description

How have marginalized people used the tools of the powerful to advance their interests? Although we tend to think of enslaved people’s relationship to the law as indifferent at best, or hostile at worst, in a variety of different jurisdictions in colonial America and the United States those held in slavery were sometimes able to use the legal system. In a special type of legal action known as a “freedom suit,” enslaved people asserted that they were unlawfully held in bondage and, if successful, obtained their freedom. From the Chesapeake Bay to Massachusetts Bay, from New Orleans to St. Louis, and many points in between, at least a thousand such cases were filed. They freed hundreds of enslaved people, ended slavery in one state, and, in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), helped bring the nation to the brink of civil war.

This course explores the many freedom suits prosecuted in American courts. We examine the nuts and bolts of how freedom suits worked: the distinctive features of these legal actions, the mechanics of filing and prosecuting a case, the challenges plaintiffs faced in securing quality representation, and the various legal bases one might use to initiate a case. We explore the broader questions freedom suits pose. Why, for instance, did a legal system designed to protect private property and the institution of slavery nevertheless tolerate freedom suits, let alone convey freedom on many plaintiffs? How do freedom suits change our understanding of law, slavery, and the law’s relationship to enslaved people? And we consider the human dimension of freedom suits: the men, women, and children who filed these cases, often at enormous risk to themselves and their loved ones, as well as the attorneys who prosecuted and defended them and the judges and juries who presided over and decided them.