They were bought souls sent and inherited, but they themselves did not buy, sell, contract and inherent. Slaves inhabit their masters agenda. They lived through their masters agendas and lives during a time of their enslavement. The subject and subjective quality of their lives is overtaken by their existence as such, slaves are often on notice. It is hard to find details about their lives. They are described in the passive voice as having the characteristics of object. There are many lawsuits that involved slaves. The law books are full of them. They took place over the heads of slaves between free persons. Slaves did not sue. I wrote a book about 300 who did. And pardon me. And surprisingly, the majority won. This species of lawsuit is rare, indeed. In breed of cases and freedom cases before dred scott, the slave was pitted in fierce opposition to his or her master. What was a freedom suit . How did a slave get a lawyer . How did a slave get to court . Under the procedure set out by a missouri statute, the slave began a lawsuit by orally telling his case, his life story, to a clerk or a justice of the peace. The affidavit told the slaves story and the clerk read the wrote the story down and then the slaves signed with an x. Customary for the literate persons. Four illiterate persons ive arrayed some 300 xes here, which with the signatures of slaves in freedom petitions. The xes made at the bottom were the account of a slaves life and it must be remembered that slaves were forbidden to read or write. So for these individuals, it was probably most probably the very first time they had ever held a pen and they were making an x in defiance of their master to assert their freedom. These cases are the original filings of the trial court level. And so, there are a lot of details. They are authentic accounts you could not find other places about people whom you have never heard of before but will lift fascinating, interesting lives. And the petition read this if sometimes the clerk simply took down the haitian of what the took down the dictation of what the slave had to say. There is a story behind every one of these xes. Behind one x, of course, is dred scott, notorious, the case. Unknown, the man. Behind another x is his wife harriet. But there are others. Many more xes than pictures. This is lucy delaney who signed an x when she was just a child and live to write about it after the civil war. Swansee adams, one of the duncan slaves, which is one of my favorite stories because it is a story in which there is a superb victory for all of the duncan slaves over all of their duncan masters. But behind each of these stories is a family or an individual and, altogether, many of these freedom suits were family affairs. Whether the litigants sued jointly or in succession, a total of 160 persons of the 239 for whom we have records, were in the family, they sued as a family. Consider then some of these xes clustered together as mothers and children and brothers and sisters. There are some litigants for whom we have no legal records at all, but of these 153 were women and 126 were men. Most of the petitioners faced based their claim on the fact they were taken to a place where slavery was banned. Here are some other bases as the book explains, but the primary centerpiece collection here are slaves, who by living and working in free territory, not as a runaway but with ones masters consent could be in a position to retain their freedom by going to court. Read deem their freedom by going to court. The bondage of the slave was broken by living and residing in free territory. Crossing the boundary with ones master and remaining there, made the bondsman free. The rule was that simple. These cases were the centerpiece of st. Louis freedoms is in the freedom suits and in the cases were fomented through westward migration and national expansion. The role of freedom by residents, living on free soil was essentially derived from migration. And in these cases, from westward migration of owners with their slaves. In these cases, the petitioners directly opposed their masters wishes. They petitioned the court to override those wishes because for some time in the course of western migration, that person had lived on free soil. These cases were truly transformational. Most slaves were brought west by floating with the current down the ohio river. The northern shore was free. And missouris longest border was with a free state illinois. This border had to be passed by or passed through in getting west. St. Louis was as a marketplace for the west. St. Louis was the depot for most westwood immigrants. It was the place to change steamboats whether you are going north, south, or whether you are going further west on the missouri river. And disputes brewing elsewhere were funneled into st. Louis by gravitating to the transportation hub. A steady stream of petitioners satisfy the criteria for freedom by having lived on free soil before arriving in st. Louis in a slave state. St. Louis was the natural cashman area for slaves who had experienced a mixed pattern of residence in the course of migrating west. St. Louis was the perfect storm. The western labor market needed slaves. St. Louis found slaves were brought down the ohio river principally to tame the west. And they were needed estimate as the mastic laborers in as domestic laborers in order to advance the prophecies of settlements faster than could be done by the doityourself yeoman farmers and merchants. Slaves occupied a slightly different role in the west than they did in the south. First, the slave men were needed as the muscle to move the cargo to supply the west and to provide for western expansion. Second, in a few limited areas particularly where they were lead and salt deposits, slave men were set to work in mining. These were jobs that free men did not want to do and you could not find large numbers of free men to do these jobs. Hired labor was available only at a premium, so slaves were imported. And third, slave men and women were brought into the antebellum frontier as labor to provide the basic needs of sustenance for things that could not be bought in the market for jobs, tasks that could not be hired. Slaves were available for settlement and lands were available. There was a lot of land in great supply. You could buy a farm for a far less amount than the cost of a slave. Slaves were set to work building cabins, fences, stills, chopping wood, making fires, feeding and watering people and animals, cooking, laundering, and where there were travelers, providing for those travelers. In remote areas, slaves provided the labor of basic household sustenance so that that community could gain on the equation of their survival. Who could build the state, attend a court, found the school, build a library, or form a legislature if all hands were needed simply to maintain survival . Only when some household members were free from the tasks of maintaining survival could the community built the infrastructure of roads, governments, and institutions on which to advance. Work done by slaves permitted the settlement to advance faster than the settlements could have done without them. The goal of freedom in these cases was always same freedom was the ability to go and do and serve from ever one wished. Who everyone wished. And just as important, to refuse to obey others who had no legitimate claim to them at all. And also, the freedom to remain in place if they wished, not to have to run in to keep running. These cases highlight also freedoms opposite the power of enslavement that can be exercised without any accountability whatsoever. The litigants entered the courts in different ways, and they pay different prices for winning their freedom. The price that freedom promised to them by law was surprisingly high for many of these litigants. I wrote the stories by looking at the xes and reading backward. Reading the accounts, the petitions, the slaves had given for themselves. Had provided in the elements necessary for the lawsuit to establish their freedom. And then constructing the world around them. Could i verify that they had, in fact, lived in this particular place in illinois for three or four months . Surprisingly in many instances , i could. I checked sentences, tax censuses, everything available in order to map the world in which the slaves traveled in order to find the story behind these xes. Each of these chapters is a different short story. And the slaves subject life is added center with a Redemption Song, the transformative moment. I would like to tell you about just a few of the stories. One is peter and his wife queen. Peters case is the very earliest case to be decided under the northwest ordinance determining slaves to be free. This is decided before 1800. In an area that is now illinois sorry, indiana. Vincenze, indiana. The story was hidden in the papers of a private collector. This story had never been told before. And it is also the only story occurring in the book that takes place in a free jurisdiction. Peter and his wife queen are suing for their freedom in indiana. It should have been an easy case. Peters story demonstrates the difficulty of establishing ones freedom in a relatively unsettled portion of the United States territory. Peter and his wife set off from kentucky for freelance, for free for free land, for free soil. But two persons traveling alone and camping beside the falls of the wabash river were quickly noticed by Indian Tribes who occupied the area. We do not know which tribes captured peter and queen, but they were taken captive and held for several days. And then they were taken to vincenze, but they were sold as slaves. The indians got two rifles and some ammunition and peter knew exactly the price of his head. Peter is living in free territory, he and his wife are sold to a man. And they basically stay with him for the winter because there is no place else for them to go. They had to wait until spring, until the very first judge came to the territory for the very first time before they had anyone to appeal to. And peter wasted no time. He approached the judge on the very day that judge turner arrived. Judge turner quickly saw that peter deserved a habeas corpus and should be freed from his master and peter was entitled to some money for his treatment. But he allowed peter and queen to go back to the punitive master, mr. Vanderberg. And that is where conspiracy began. Peters story is the story of a perfect conspiracy. It is almost the blueprint for one. How you separate one slave from another. How you deceive them, how you send them off on an errant only to be taken captive. And what was the objective . The objective was to keep him away from the judge. Well, peter is later freed. The story is a dramatic one. But there is one further note. Peter was actually a soldier in the revolutionary war. I found his veterans pension. The two men who kidnapped and tormented him are far better known because they have counties named after them in indiana. Jean marie was born in illinois. Sometimes called g. Mary depending on whether youre pronouncing it in the french he that he grew up in or in english, which was customary in st. Louis. He was born to a woman who was enslaved by the french and had been brought into the area before it was even deemed to be american territory. Jean marie fought for his freedom and the freedom of his wife and his two children. He was kidnapped twice and shipped to new orleans twice and manacles for ale. In manacles for sale. And twice he beat them back, escaped and sued first freedom. The first time the suit for his the first time he sued for his freedom he sued in st. , louis, appealing all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court. I was able to find that on that day the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in his favor, he had a party. I know that because people who lost try to bring an action for Disorderly Conduct for him for creating such a ruckus. That was not the end. He was kidnapped one more time and this time sent back to new orleans. There he filed suit again and the Louisiana Court of killing appealing all away to the louisiana Supreme Court. And jean marie and a family ended their lives and freedom in st. Louis. Lydia titus established her freedom very early in illinois. She went on to marry a Friedman Mary a free man and they purchased 160 acres, they raise livestock. They had a family. They raised their children. And at one point, her husband died. Several years after that, on one fateful night, heirs of her former master, a generation later appeared at her door and under the cover of darkness, kidnapped her children and grandchildren. With them was illinois secretary of state who is acting as their lawyer. The secretary of state was a large man, very imposing, and he said that was doing this for the law and his clients. He also wielded a gun and he made lydia lie facedown on the floor where her children and grandchildren were taken off and in a wagon. Grandmother lydia was not going to allow that to stop her. The next morning, she was at court before court open filing of the to get the return. The filing of freedom suit to get the return. These cases are full of paradoxes, so when the sheriff found lydias children in the kidnappers on the road south, he arrested them both. The kidnappers. Because they had kidnapped lydias children. Lydias children for their own safekeeping and both parties were held in the same jail. Lydia frees her children and her grandchildren but at some cost. Two of her children do not survive the ordeal. They die in the cold jail. And at the very end, the homestead that she had built up with her husband had to be sold to pay her lawyer. David shipmans story is far more uplifting and he was a kentucky mill owner who was falling into debt and he knew his creditors were coming to seize the slave family if they could. He wanted them to take the mill. Take the livestock. And so, in order to free them from the prospect of being captured and sold at auction, he took them first to indiana and later to a Quaker Settlement in illinois and he gave them their freedom papers. There was enough money left behind for his creditors. But his creditors wanted the slaves because remember, a slave was more valuable than a farm. So they went after the slaves, kidnapping them from this Quaker Settlement near. Peoria. Undercover, in the dead of night, and a team of quakers set off after them into a canoe. The fracas ended up in st. Louis with a freedom suit. Filed by the family. Eventually, everyone became free. They all inherited the property that David Shipman had bought for them. Leah charleville lived a double life. She was something of a gangster. She was playing off two black men at the same time. One her husband, and the other a handsome, dapper barber. As she was running a boarding house, she was also the head of a gang of riverboat these that lived at her boarding house. She importuned wealthy men finding out how much money they had and sent the thieves to get their money, to steal their chests. This went on for a long time. She was clever about this because she was always in church proclaiming her love for jesus on exactly the moment the thieves were grabbing the goods. She had an alibi and she made a point to sit near the front so she would be seen. Now, leah placed children and the ministers home. And over the course of her life, she went to court not because her freedom was uncertain but in order to leverage someone who had threatened her livelihood. Light skinned eliza tyler was deceived in one of the worst possible ways. She lived with an africanamerican man as a commonlaw wife in illinois. And one day, a slave trader offered her commonlaw husband money to sell her to a brothel in new orleans. She was lightskinned, and so she could bring a higher price. She was deceived it into boarding a steamboat. By the time she got to st. Louis, she figured out what was going on and quickly made her way to court before she could be hustled off to the second steamboat. Hector was given papers by her master and he moved to new york. He did not need a slave. She lived independently in st. Louis among a community of free blacks. One day, he changed his mind and traveled to st. Louis and tried to sell her and his own child into slavery. She filed a freedom suit and was free. But one of my favorite stories is the story of the duncan family. The Duncan Brothers, black and white brothers. Imagine that when Jessie Duncan died, his nine black slaves were divided in the will among his white sons. They all share the last name duncan. Each of the white Duncan Brothers inherited a different black slaves and the white Duncan Brothers were quite wild young men. Each one had a different price. A different device vice. One was subject to alcohol. One to gambling. None of them were really womanizers. The one who got married left his wife after he had six children with her and went off to join the rest of the brothers. They drank a lot, they looked for the rich quick schemes, but basically they did no work and lived off slaves. They supported themselves by living off slaves. There was a sandbar in the middle of the mississippi river. They could smuggle their slaves from one place to the other backandforth, up and down the river. Mining in lead, mining in salt. Working wherever they could assign them, but for the next 30 years, one after another of the black duncan slaves establishes freedom and worked to get the other out. Person after person, purchase, lawsuit, escape, lawsuit escape, kidnapped, lawsuit escape. At the end of 30 years, the nine black duncan slaves, some of whom are brothers, had become the most upstanding leading established black men of the community of st. Louis. They had founded the church, started businesses, married and raise families of their own. While the white Duncan Brothers lived out their wastrel lives and one after another died in poverty. In perhaps the perfect irony and poetic justice at the very end the black Duncan Brothers bought the remnants of inheritance that were given to their previous masters. Well, i called the book Redemption Songs because it is a metaphor for the voices of the subordinated people who have been silent in history. It is redemption because it refers to the persons transformation and status from slave, property of another person to being a legal person an independent person themselves. And it is a song because it follows this course that has a a discourse that has a particular set of conventions that go along with this kind of lawsuit. It is a song sung by the slaves by him or herself. A slave is trained to answer his master and to suit his purposes. Yet, and suing for freedom slave defies that mass. That master. When one sings a