Celia’s Case(1857)

Abstract

Abstract If one were to start, there would be no end to the horror stories that could be told about the nightmare of American slavery. Although the institution was a marked catastrophe for a people, the fundamentally tragic nature of slavery unfolded, in historian Walter Johnson’s apt phrase, “soul by soul.” Each enslaved man, woman, and child could tell his or her own unique tale of suffering during a time when law, culture, economics, and religion-the pillars that sustain a society-worked in concert against the humanity of black people. For the most part, the stories of individuals who lived in bondage are lost from the historical record. That is why each story that has survived must be treated as the rare, and thus valuable, artifact that it is.