Author:
Thomas, William G., 1964- author.
ImprintNew Haven : Yale University Press, [2020]
Imprint2020
Description418 pages : illustrations, maps, genealogical charts ; 25 cm
Note:Prologue: Georgetown, April 2017 -- Part I. The planting -- A meeting at White Marsh, 1789 -- Attempting to poison a certain Richard Duckett the Younger -- Ought to be free -- The nine ninety-nine -- Charles Mahoney is a free man -- Our ancestors are calling our names -- A public scandal -- ABD -- Part II. The inheritance -- Queen v. Hepburn: a question of freedom -- Dead but not forgotten -- The turning -- Juneteenth -- Mob law -- Return to pleasant prospect -- The sale -- Duckettsville -- The last freedom trail.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:"For over seventy years and five generations, the enslaved families of Prince George's County, Maryland, filed hundreds of suits for their freedom against a powerful circle of slaveholders, taking their cause all the way to the Supreme Court. Between 1787 and 1861, these lawsuits challenged the legitimacy of slavery in American law and put slavery on trial in the nation's capital. Piecing together evidence once dismissed in court and buried in the archives, William Thomas tells an intricate and intensely human story of the enslaved families (the Butlers, Queens, Mahoneys, and others), their lawyers (among them a young Francis Scott Key), and the slaveholders who fought to defend slavery, beginning with the Jesuit priests who held some of the largest plantations in the nation and founded a college at Georgetown."
