Analyzes Louisiana's slave laws from the territorial period to the Civil War. The numerous case histories Shafer presents depict in detail what living in bondage could mean.
Analyzes Louisiana's slave laws from the territorial period to the Civil War. The numerous case histories Shafer presents depict in detail what living...
For more than 150 years, the tales of hundreds of slaves and free people of color who used the judicial system to negotiate their freedom lay buried deep within the dusty records of the New Orleans district courts. Then Judith Kelleher Schafer spent fourteen years poring over Minute Books and trial transcripts, uncovering for the first time the details of these fascinating cases. In Becoming Free, Remaining Free, Schafer presents her findings and offers a profound analysis of slavery and manumission in the Crescent City. Louisiana state law was unique in allowing slaves to contract for their...
For more than 150 years, the tales of hundreds of slaves and free people of color who used the judicial system to negotiate their freedom lay buried d...
Winner of the 2009 Gulf South Historical Association Book Award
When a priest suggested to one of the first governors of Louisiana that he banish all disreputable women to raise the colony's moral tone, the governor responded, "If I send away all the loose females, there will be no women left here at all." Primitive, mosquito infested, and disease ridden, early French colonial New Orleans offered few attractions to entice respectable women as residents. King Louis XIV of France solved the population problem in 1721 by emptying Paris's La Salpetriere prison of many of its most notorious...
Winner of the 2009 Gulf South Historical Association Book Award
When a priest suggested to one of the first governors of Louisiana that he banish...
