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.

In the Shadow of the Gallows
Race, Crime, and American Civic Identity

Jeannine Marie DeLombard

2012 | 456 pages | Cloth $59.95 | Paper $27.50
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