In the Shadow of the Gallows reveals how a sense of racialized culpability shaped Americans' understandings of personhood prior to the Civil War. Jeannine Marie DeLombard draws from legal, literary, and popular texts to address fundamental questions about race, responsibility, and American civic belonging.
2012 | 456 pages | Cloth $59.95 | Paper $29.95
Literature | Law | Cultural Studies | American History
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Table of Contents
Introduction: How a Slave Was Made a Man
PART I
Chapter 1. Contracting Guilt: Mixed Character, Civil Slavery, and the Social Compact
Chapter 2. Black Catalogues: Crime, Print, and the Rise of the Black Self
PART II
Chapter 3. The Ignominious Cord: Crime, Counterfactuals, and the New Black Politics
Chapter 4. The Work of Death: Time, Crime, and Personhood in Jacksonian America
Chapter 5. How Freeman Was Made a Madman: Race, Capacity, and Citizenship
Chapter 6. Who Aint a Slaver? Citizenship, Piracy, and Slaver Narratives
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments