Between slavery and freedom

"Between Slavery and Freedom" focuses on the history of African Americans from the late eighteenth century until the onset of the Civil War. It uses labor history, legal history; and the study of gender relations to tell the story of African Americans in Annapolis, Maryland. The petitions for freedom I analyze in this dissertation reveals the invention of a labor system that allowed for the co-existence of slavery and freedom. The simultaneous evolution of the legal system and the labor system, coincided with national events. When legislators crafted the law of 1663, it not only enslaved black people for life, but it also said that men would determine the status of their off-spring. Legislators who created the law went one step further by declaring that white women who had children by black men would be enslaved and their children would serve until they reached thirty years of age. The enactment of this law introduced the system of term slavery and was deeply racialized and gendered. By the Revolutionary period children with this biracial heritage petitioned the court for their freedom. In doing so, they introduced a tradition among blacks in Maryland to seek legal redress through the courts. However, while some early petitions were successful, by the antebellum period African Americans persistent challenges to the legal system had unintended consequences. Towards the 1830s as petitioners gained freedom and populated Maryland society, laws tightened and judge's decisions no longer favored manumitting blacks. Maryland began to resemble states to the lower south even though their economy did not rest on plantation slavery. By 1857 when Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney, a Marylander, handed down the decision in the Scott case, he reflected onto the African American population in the United States the conditions African Americans faced in Maryland. Thus, although the nation and Maryland's economic system did not entirely depend on plantation slavery, Taney believed that in order to hold the nation together ideas of proslavery advocates should be privileged.