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Legal Theory Bookworm

By Lawrence Solum

The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery's Frontier Lea VanderVelde. Here is a description:

Among the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford . Despite the case's signal importance as a turning point in America's history, the lives of the slave litigants have receded to the margins of the record, as conventional accounts have focused on the case's judges and lawyers. 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.

A remarkable piece of historical detective work, Mrs. Dred Scott chronicles Harriet's life from her adolescence on the 1830s Minnesota-Wisconsin frontier, to slavery-era St. Louis, through the eleven years of legal wrangling that ended with the high court's notorious decision. The book not only recovers her story, but also reveals that Harriet may well have been the lynchpin in this pivotal episode in American legal history. Reconstructing Harriet Scott's life through innovative readings of journals, military records, court dockets, and even frontier store ledgers, VanderVelde offers a stunningly detailed account that is at once a rich portrait of slave life, an engrossing legal drama, and a provocative reassessment of a central event in U.S. constitutional history. More than a biography, the book is a deep social history that freshly illuminates some of the major issues confronting antebellum America, including the status of women, slaves, Free Blacks, and Native Americans.

And from the reviews:

"In a remarkable act of historical recovery, VanderVelde resurrects the life of Harriet Scott."--Martha A. Sandweiss, The Washington Post

"Through Harriet Scott's life, the author is able to create a valuable portrait of the development of slavery on the U.S. frontier during an era in which that scourge was leading the country toward civil war. Despite the wealth of historical knowledge presented, the heart of this well-researched work is the tragic tale of how a loving family's effort to gain their freedom was brutally rejected by Supreme Court justices bent on maintaining the institution of slavery at all costs. Essential for academic libraries and highly recommended for public libraries."--Library Journal, starred review "Groundbreaking.... Mrs. Dred Scott is a sophisticated reconstruction revealing a fundamental dimension of the Dred Scott saga." --Books & Culture

"Utilizing a wide array of primary and secondary sources, VanderVelde pieces together an amazing amount of detail surrounding Harriet's life despite the lack of direct source material from Harriet herself.... Mrs. Dred Scott truly is history from the bottom up as its best."--Sharon A. Roger Hepburn, Civil War Book Review

"This is an extraordinary piece of historical research. In Mrs. Dred Scott, Lea VanderVelde provides, for the first time, a full picture of the role and significance of Scott's wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, in one of the most important cases ever decided by the Supreme Court. VanderVelde presents a powerful description of the Scotts' experiences at various military posts on the rough northwest frontier. In doing so, she adds an important dimension to understanding Justice Taney's opinion in the Dred Scott case."--Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

"The fascinating, fact-filled story of an illiterate slave woman who sued persistently for her freedom over an eleven-year period and gained it in the end -- no thanks to the most notorious Supreme Court decision in U.S. history."--Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 "Lea VanderVelde reminds us of what lawyers too often forget, that very real human beings are the subjects of the 'great cases' of constitutional law. Among the human beings involved in the infamous Dred Scott case was Harriet Scott, Dred's wife. Given the paucity of conventional materials about specific slaves, VanderVelde does a remarkable job of historical excavation to reconstruct the circumstances of her life. She illuminates American social, as well as legal, history. A bravura performance!"--Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School and author of Our Undemocratic Constitution

"Lea VanderVelde wisely appreciates the significance of lives that have long been invisible to historians and constitutional scholars. She has worked with diligence and ingenuity to recover the lost voice of Harriet Robinson Scott. Our understanding of the Supreme Court's infamous and consequential decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford will be forever changed and profoundly enriched by her work."--Peggy Cooper Davis, author of Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values

"VanderVelde is to be congratulated for uncovering every possible source that could shed light on Harriet [Scott's] life." -- American Historical Review

VanderVelde does what no other biographer has. She places Mrs. Dred Scott at the center of a well-known moment in American history for a greater understanding of the "significant efforts by subordinate individuals to influence the circumstances of their lives." -- Journal of American History

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on May 29, 2010 (boomark / email).