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Slavery and its lasting effects have long been an issue in America, with the scars inflicted running deep. This study examines crimes such as stealing, burglary, arson, rape and murder committed against and by slaves, with most of the author's information coming from handwritten court records and newspapers. These documents show the death penalty rarely applied when a slave killed another slave, but that it always applied when a slave killed a white person. Despite Missouri's grim criminal justice system, the state's best lawyers were called upon to represent slaves in court on serious criminal charges, and federal law applied to all persons, granting slaves in Missouri protection that few other slave states had. By 1860, Missouri's population was only 10 percent slave, the smallest percentage of any slave state in America.
From the beginning of French rule of Missouri in 1720 through this state's abolition of slavery in 1865, liberty was always the goal of the vast majority of its enslaved people. The presence in eastern Kansas of a host of abolitionists from New England made slaveholding risky business. Many religiously devout persons were imprisoned in Missouri for "slave stealing." Based largely on old newspapers, prison records, pardon papers, and other archival materials, this book is an account of the legal and physical obstacles that slaves faced in their quest for freedom and of the consequences suffered by persons who tried to help them. Attitudes of both slave holders and abolitionists are examined, as is the institution's protection in both the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. The book discusses the experiences of particular individuals and examines the Underground Railroad on Missouri's borders. Appendices provide details from two Spanish colonial census reports, a list of abolitionist prison inmates with details about their time served, and the percentages of African Americans still in bondage in 16 jurisdictions from 1820 to 1860.
Plays, playscripts.
This book looks at a United States that continues to be driven by racial and cultural divisions, from the disproportionately high number of incarcerated African Americans to heartfelt disagreements over the true nature of marriage and the proper role of faith in public policy.
With an introduction by Simon Callow Judgements about the quality of works of art begin in opinion. But for the last two hundred years only the wilfully perverse (and Tolstoy) have denied the validity of the opinion that Shakespeare was a genius. Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? And what makes it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? Exploring Shakespeare's life, including questions of authorship and autobiography, and charting how his legacy has grown over the centuries, this extraordinary book asks how Shakespeare has come to be such a powerful symbol of genius. Written with lively passion and wit, The Genius of Shakespeare is a fascinating biography of the life - and afterlife - of our greatest poet. Jonathan Bate, one of the world's leading Shakespearean scholars, has shown how the legend of Shakespeare's genius was created and sustained, and how the man himself became a truly global phenomenon. 'The best modern book on Shakespeare' Sir Peter Hall
In telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom. --from publisher description.
Remediating Shakespeare in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries analyzes literary remediations of Shakespeare’s works, particularly those written for young readers. This book explores adaptations, revisions, and reimaginings by Lewis Theobald, the Bowdlers, the Lambs, and Mary Cowden Clarke, among others, to provide a theoretical account of the poetics and practices of remediating literary texts. Considering the interplay between the historical fascination with Shakespeare and these practices of adaptation, this book examines the endless attempt to mediate our relationship to Shakespeare. Howard Marchitello investigates the motivations behind various forms of remediation, ultimately expanding theories of literary adaptation and appropriation.
The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback.
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