Studies lawsuits to gain freedom for slaves on the grounds of their having traveled to free territory, starting with Somerset v. Stewart (England, 1772), Commonwealth v. Aves (Massachussetts, 1836), Dred Scott v. Sanford, and cases brought questioning the legitimacy of Negro Seamen Acts in the antebellum coastal South. These lawsuits and accounts of them are compared to fugitive slave narratives to shed light on both. The differing impact of freedom...

A professor of history who specializes in slavery and constitutional law investigates one of the most significant--and unjustly forgotten--Supreme Court cases in American history involving the slave ship Antelope and the three hundred African lives at stake.

"An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer. Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution--a system he regarded as the "last best hope of mankind." But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In...