A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War by William G. Thomas III

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War by William G. Thomas III Alice L. Baumgartner A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War. By William G. Thomas III. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. [x], 418. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-0-300-26150-9; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 978-0-300-23412-1.) From the 1780s to the Civil War, enslaved people in Prince George's County, Maryland, filed over a thousand legal actions for their freedom. With careful research and beautiful prose, William G. Thomas III makes the powerful argument that freedom suits laid bare the uncertain legal foundations of slavery and, in the process, represented "a public counterpart of the Underground Railroad" (p. 9). In 1770, William and Mary Butler sued for their freedom on the grounds that their grandmother Eleanor Butler, or "Irish Nell," was a "free white woman" and indentured servant (p. 24). Although Eleanor had married an enslaved man in 1681, which, under a 1664 act, consigned her to bondage "for the duration of her husband's life," the Maryland General Assembly overturned this law shortly after Eleanor's marriage (p. 24). In their suit for freedom, William and Mary Butler argued that Eleanor's children were free because they were born after the repeal of the 1664 act. The provincial court decided in the Butlers' favor, but the court of appeals reversed the lower court's ruling, asserting that the 1664 act applied because Eleanor and Charles Butler were married under its terms. Undeterred, the next generation of Butlers filed lawsuit after lawsuit—and in the wake of the American Revolution, the Butlers started to win. Soon other enslaved people started to claim their freedom on the grounds that their ancestors were free. In 1791, Edward Queen sued for his freedom because his grandmother, Mary Queen, was a "free woman of color" from New Spain sold as an indentured servant (p. 168). Also in 1791, Charles [End Page 408] Mahoney filed a petition that he was descended from a free woman named Ann Joice. In response, the Maryland assembly made it more difficult for enslaved people to bring suits. In 1793, the legislature granted jurisdiction over petitions for freedom to lower district courts, which were often more favorable to slaveholders. Three years later, in 1796, the assembly required that attorneys representing enslaved people pay the court costs if their freedom suits were dismissed. The courts also handed down decisions that were unfavorable to enslaved people. In 1810, when Mina Queen claimed her freedom because she descended from Mary Queen, the District of Columbia Circuit Court ruled parts of a crucial deposition "hearsay" and, consequently, inadmissible (p. 171). The tightening of evidentiary standards made it more difficult for enslaved people to secure their freedom on the basis of ancestry. To make matters worse, the Jesuits sold 272 enslaved people to Louisiana in 1838, depriving those who remained in Maryland of crucial witnesses in freedom suits. As evidentiary standards tightened, and as enslaved people were sold from the Eastern Seaboard to the south-central United States, the opportunities for freedom on the basis of ancestry dwindled. But enslaved people continued to file petitions on other legal grounds. The most successful cases were of emancipated enslaved people who had been illegally imported into the District of Columbia. In 1828, Thomas Butler successfully sued for his freedom because he and his family had been sold in the district, violating Maryland's laws against the slave trade. Four years later, Ann Williams won her freedom on the same grounds. Enslaved people from Prince George's County secured their freedom not by escaping to Canada but by filing petitions with the courts. Thomas convincingly argues that these freedom suits were an important, if overlooked, route on the Underground Railroad. The "conductors" on this route were lawyers of mixed allegiances, like Joseph Bradley, himself a slaveholder, and Allen Bowie Duckett, Thomas's own ancestor. The heroes of this route were not the lawyers but the petitioners themselves, who, by ingenuity, perseverance, and legal acumen...