The Library of Congress has announced a new addition to their
website: Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860. This online collection consists
of about one hundred pamphlets and books documenting the experiences of African
and African-American slaves in the United States and American colonies. Resources
include trial arguments, examinations of cases and decisions, proceeding, and
other materials concerning slavery and the slave trade. You can locate information
by using the collection’s subject index, author index, or title index,
or you can conduct your own search by keyword. The items in the collection are
available as page images. Most of the pages have been fully transcribed, and
those transcriptions are also available online.
Of the cases presented on the website, most took place in America
and a few in Great Britain. The cases include arguments by many well-known abolitionists,
presidents, politicians, slave owners, fugitive and free territory slaves, lawyers
and judges, and justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Significant names include
John Q. Adams, Roger B. Taney, John C. Calhoun, Salmon P. Chase, Dred Scott,
William H. Seward, Theodore Parker, Jonathan Walker, Daniel Drayton, Castner
Hanway, Francis Scott Key, William L. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Denmark Vesey,
and John Brown.
You can view this valuable new resource at: memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/.
Dick Eastman Online
