Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South by Loren Schweninger

Abstract

Reviewed by: Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South by Loren Schweninger Aston Gonzalez Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South. Loren Schweninger. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-1906-6428-2. 440 pp., cloth, $39.95. Interspersed with provocative and chilling accounts of enslaved people attempting to win their freedom using means of law, Appealing for Liberty offers an outstanding overview of the strategies that secured their freedom. Schweninger's analysis and comparison of more than two thousand freedom suits representing more than fortysix hundred plaintiffs from all of the Southern states and the District of Columbia provide numerous insights into the people, laws, and courts that determined their outcomes. Primarily organized by theme, the work is bookended with chapters on freedom suits that incorporate legal issues that are closely scrutinized within the book. Schweninger follows the legal distinctions that helped determine these cases between the American Revolution and the Civil War by parsing out the importance of how, when, and where people gained or failed in their attempts to win their freedom. Schweninger's book reveals a great deal about the court systems that enslaved people navigated. In pointing out the differences among the state laws and customs that shaped juridical and legal processes, two states—Louisiana and Delaware—receive special attention. All Southern states are represented in the book, but many of the most striking cases come from these two states. A series of laws offered more avenues for freedom that stemmed from nonimportation laws, being hired out, skin color, and Native American heritage. As legal historian Ariela Gross has previously argued, many cases highlight the importance of performing race, specifically whiteness or Indianness and its often attendant freedom, according to phenotype, dress, and comportment in the courts. For example, until the approach of the Civil War Louisiana law presumed skin color to reflect enslaved or free status (53, 120). Other avenues to freedom—such as hearsay evidence permissible in the courts—closed shortly in the decades after the American Revolution. Furthermore, these freedom suits illuminate the procedure of judicial evidence with respect to enslavement and freedom. Lower courts granted freedom to plaintiffs who purchased themselves through self-hire, an often illegal practice, but "the appeals courts would invariably reverse the rulings" (176). [End Page 321] The book provides a rich understanding of those people who helped and hindered enslaved people's claims to freedom. Though enslaved (rarely) and free black people (occasionally) provided testimony to assist in a freedom suit, white community members and lawyers, many of them slaveowners, provided the bulk of the legal support in the examined cases. In an especially revealing chapter, readers discover that white lawyers took on freedom suits not due to financial gain or antislavery beliefs but because they "sought to maintain the integrity of the statutes enacted by state legislatures, to safeguard the sanctity of the legal process, and to defend the rights of slaves or free persons of color who, they deemed, had been unfairly treated" (242). Schweninger's study reveals that "in only a few, isolated cases" did antislavery activists assist African Americans suing for their freedom (187). Later chapters of the book that focus on interpersonal relationships make clear that claimants often benefitted from an extensive support network. Others, like those who initially stood to inherit enslaved people in wills, often turned to deceptive or illegal actions to keep term slaves and manumitted slaves permanently in bondage. Additionally, enslaved people documented how enslavers broke agreements and swindled them in order to derive more labor and financial gain from them despite a promise of freedom. The testimonies of enslaved people reveal a wealth of information about them. They demonstrate their knowledge of the court system, the laws of their states and surrounding states, and to whom they turned for assistance. Some learned that residency in a free state or territory before their return to a slave state could be a path to freedom (145). Their use of legal strategies including injunctions and writs of habeas corpus demonstrated the knowledge they and their legal counsel possessed. Court proceedings recorded their family histories, community ties, and harrowing life experiences. Due to the expansive nature...