Harriet. But there are others. Many more xes than pictures. This is lucy delaney who signed an x which you as 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. 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 entry. The rule was that simple. These cases were the centerpiece of st. Louis freedoms is 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 quarter had to be passed this border had to be 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 that 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. Sallaves 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 sentence 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. 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 . In many instances, i could. I sense 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. Then sends indiana vincenze indiana. The story was hidden in the papers of a private collector. 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 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 desert a red deserved a writ of habeas corpus and should be freed from his master and peter was entitled to some money for his treatment. But he allow 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 for the one further know. Peter was actually a soldier in the revolutionary war. I found his veterans pensi on. 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 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 shipp ed to new orleans twice and manacles for ale. And twice he beat them back escaped and sued first freedom. The first time the suit 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 set act to new orleans. Back new earnings. To there he filed suit again and the Louisiana Court of killing all away to the louisiana Supreme Court. And jeand 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 they purchased 160 acres, they raise livestock. They had a family. They raise their children. And at one point, her husband died. Several years after that, on one fateful night herisirs of her former master, i generation later, appeared at her door and was of the 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 Olivia Li Lydia lie facedown on the floor where her children and grandchildren were taken off and awaken. 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. 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 lydi as children. Lydias children for their 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 and, the homestead that she had built up with her husband had to be sold to pay her lawyer. David shipmans sorty is story is far more uplifting and he was a kentucky mill owner who was falling into debt and he knew his creditors were calm and sees 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 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. Lia 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 the hang of riverboat th thieves. She importuned wealthy men finding out how much money they had and sent the thieves to get their money to steal their chests. This one on for a long time. Went on for a long time. She was clever about this because she was always in church proclaiming her love on jesus on exactly the moment the th ieves were grabbing the goods. She made a point to sit near the front so she would be seen. Now, lia placer 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 is 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 hest ctor 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 travel 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 well among his white sons. They all share the last name duncan. Each of the white can brothers Duncan Brothers inherited a different black slaves and the white dunacan brothers were quite wild young men. Each one had a different price. 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. But for the next 30 years, one after another of the black duncan slaves establishes freedom and worked to vgget the other out. Person after person, purchase, lawsuit, escape, lawsuit, escape kidnapped, lawsuit, a 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 reductions on the we dems and science 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 particular set of conventions that go along with this kind of lawsuit. A slave is trained to answer his master and to suit his purposes. Yet, and suing for freedom slave defies that mass. When one sings a Redemption Song, one speaks truth to power. But not the full truth because a slave is not empowered to tell the full truth. Just enough of the truth to be upsetting to the master to make a sound discordant with the legitimacy of that ownership and yet and not to meet the truths necessary in order to establish that redemption. That much and no more. At the crexendo these cases is a story i have tried to tell from the petitioner standpoint. It is written from the slaves perspective. In these petitions are seeking the slaves own objective which is freedom. Historians of the antebellum america have strained here the muffled voices of the silence population. And slavery itself created that silence, and yet here is a course of songs. Chorus os songs. Of songs each story has. A beginning, a middle and an end. Their contest the discourse, there is a call and response. There are depositions and witnesses that fill in missing notes. The singer is not alone on the stage. The song can be drowned out by other voices because free persons can sing more freely than slaves. What these cases are unlike in other songs is that these are not cases of rescue or mercy or grace. These are cases of entitlement. And so the boys has to be skilled. And it has to speak were carefully. More carefully. There is a spared us to some of the songs conserving the political economy of the resistance it represents. Each Redemption Song ends by fading off into the quiet of private life. These lawsuits are dramatic and transformative. Just like songs. Thank you very much. [[applause] i would be delighted to respond to any questions or comments, and i have been advised to tell people to go to one of the other of the microphones because it is necessary for the recording. Thank you. Could you address some of the procedural aspects of the cases . Were these pro se . Was there a group within the Legal Community that was sticking up his play gives and with a jury trial for judge trials . Very good question. Thank you for asking. There was a statute in missouri that appointed a lawyer. There was no cause lawyering i could find at this time. So the lawyer would be somebody sitting in the back of the courtroom who was going to be hearing another case who had some spare time and the judge would just point them. Appoint them. In the context of these cases the fact the lawyer was appointed at all is amazing because in most procedural cases, to bring a case in here, these individuals were appointed lawyers if they had reclaim. A claim. Reword triedandtrue juries as much as childrens. They were fried to juries as much as georges. Judges. The intended to rule for the plaintiff. ] this is a difficult question because in the legal arena, it is more historical and psychological. After your research and writing were you able to draw any conclusions as to the psychology of White America during this time . Dr. Vandervelde yes i hope i am responding to your question. Tell me if i am not. With 300 cases, you have a lot of cases to compare. And this is a lot of paperwork a lot of individuals, a lot of minutes of time going into these lawsuits. Documenting these lives. The most interesting psychological fact that i discovered, that i learned from this was about the fact that none of these people filed lawsuits impulsively. They knew what they were doing. They took their risk at a particular time. They thought about it. Often they had a claim for freedom long before they filed the suit. But they needed some further trigger that meant that staying in place would be about much more uncomfortable would be that much more uncomfortable than going through the suit. They knew that if they went through the suit they might end up in general as lydias children were put in jail for several months. The filings were not done impulsively or recklessly. These individuals always had to calculate the strategies of survival with the resources that they had. And that is the psychology that i found most interesting. My question did not go to the psychology of the slaves filing suit. Dr. Vandervelde i am sorry. To White America on the other side of the lawsuit. Dr. Vandervelde the interesting thing about these lawsuits under the statute is that one would think it had not even happened at all. And i did a lot of research into why it is that this statute ever got past in the first place. Edit got passed for a reason and it got passed for a reason that does not have strong residents to us for doing the right thing resonance for us for doing the right thing. Missouri into the union because of the compromise entered the union because of the compromise that took its name. Victim into the union as a slave state as main they came into the union as a slave state as maine came in as a free state. They were maintaining the balance. There was no abolitionist and evidence because preaching abolition was illegal. It was criminal during the. Buying of these lawsuits the period of these lawsuits. Filing a lawsuit today is complicated enough. I am interested about people becoming educated. It would become difficult to have faith in people that say they would lead you through a lawsuit. How did they find out they could have freedom through a lawsuit . Dr. Vandervelde this happened through the networks and the freedom black community in the free black community. There was no one leading the charge. Each of these individuals stepped forward. This was surprising to me. I thought i would see a movement. I did not see a movement. My understanding is that through the wordofmouth this simple rule meant that if you have resided in free territory, you would be free, was the kind of information that would spread through the community. There were always about six or seven of these cases going on. So people could watch these cases occurring and they would know when they were announced and one would expect that within the city of st. Louis the information would spread and spread like wildfire. Given the number of court cases, some 300 at ruled in favor of the slaves and freedom how unique his dread scott that rolled in that is is dred scott that ruled in the other direction and the Ripple Effect that it had because missouri was going in the opposite direction. Could you comment on that . Dr. Vandervelde if you look at dredd scott in isolation usually given is just predictable that a slave would lose. But dredd scott was a game changer. It ended the freedom suits. After it there was no longer a basis for bringing suit because one had been on free soil. A remarkable amount of legal activity had gone the other way for three decades. My question is related to that. With so many lawsuits being filed for freedom did you find any Common Thread about why only dredd scott made it to the Supreme Court and none of the others did . Dr. Vandervelde that i covered in my first book. And i came to my conclusion that the scott family was unbelievably unlucky. And it is not just one instance. It is the fact that if they had been able to go to trial the very first time they would have been deemed free because all of the other cases were found for a. Found free. Both their lawyer had just left sound and they were a sound a lawyer did not know what he was doing. The and they were delayed by a fire that burned out 16 square blocks of a town. And colorado. Cholera. Nobody could show up for jury. People were dying and the largest epidemic that st. Louis ever had. For a full year there was no court. During the course of this long, 11 your trial your tria year trial, the nature of missouri changed. Three new judges took the bench and it is only a threejudge bench so that is everybody. Those three judges decided against the notion of freedom by residence, the first game changer. Dredd was an aging slave with tuberculosis and not worth a whole lot at the time they filed suit. What was at stake was his wife and daughters who were young and vital and healthy. Harriet filed suit as well. If dredd scott at a separate case that harriets, and harriets had gone forward instead of putting the wife under the husband, harriet had a stronger case and the case would not have gone forward and dred could have bought his freedom for very little money. The circumstances were circumstances of extreme misfortune. And, you know, it is a misfortune that we all share. Just another question. About a week ago there was the author from columbia who has a book gateway to freedom. In that book it is amazing that he mentions how the extraterritorial pri principle was written into the constitution. If you took a slave across into the free state it was the burden on the state to help the individual retrieve it. Under English Common law it was the freedom principle that it was up to the individual. I found that absolutely amazing. He talks about that in his book and how to delegates from South Carolina two delegates from South Carolina wrote that into the constitution. It changed the common law through the constitution and set up all of these fugitive slave acts. If you could comment on that i would appreciate your insight into the constitutional issue. Dr. Vandervelde happy to. I would like to mention that on january 29 of this year, the 150th anniversary of the 13th amendment occurred. It is deserted amendment that reversed that language the 13th amendment that reversed that language in the constitution. I do not know why we dont expunge that language but it is still printed in the constitution. The fugitive slave languages in the constitution. It is intricately tried to the tied to the dred scott case because the 13th amendment used the language of the dred scott and repudiate justice tony and the case tawney in the case. Thanks again for your talk. I was curious if you mentioned the kidnappers that have counties named after them. I was curious about your thoughts of recent attempts in hollywood to give more attention to some of these Untold Stories like 12 years a slave. Dr. Vandervelde thank you so much for your comment and i agree with you and appreciate that insight. I am quite certain that the people of indiana not know that these two counties were named after individuals that perpetuated this kind of torment and kidnapping. The reason i can be fairly certain about that is that until i found these papers no one knew of them. The papers were in a private collection. They had not seen the light of day. They are now in a collection of the William English papers at the university of chicago but nobody has links them up with the individuals who had counties named after them. It would please me to no end if in fact the names of those counties would be changed. But i do not think the people of indiana know that yet. Thank you very much. I am waiting for my host. I really appreciate your coming, i appreciate your interest, and i hope that you can see in visa stories, in these stories stories of euros we have overlooked and stories of individuals that we should honor. Thank you very much. [applause] you are watching American History tv. All weekend, every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspanhi story. Next on the author pam perry talks about eisenhowers use of politics. Using television to cover press conferences. He cites examples of his Public Relations saavy from world war ii to his retirement. This program is about 40 minutes. Good evening. I have to start tonight by thanking some folks. The Eisenhower Library helped me grow up. I wrote a letter to the editor at the abilene newspaper thanking the wonderful citizens of abilene kansas and the staff at the Eisenhower Library. I think i said something a little tongueincheek, that it is not disney but the Eisenhower Library that is the greatest place on earth. That i believe that, particularly for researchers. Kevin bailey, thank you for being the best archivist on the face of the earth. The work so hard, that is such great skill, such expertise. Working with me, a green researcher, he had a lot of patients and i appreciate that. Millner, the archive technician runs a fantastic research room. Kathy helped me with the photos. Literally everybody on this campus that is the Eisenhower Center i think helped me in one way or another. I would also like to thank retired archivist jim because you gave me the idea for this project. Without him the project definitely would not have happened because it was his idea. You were all a part of this village and thank you for helping me these past few years. Dr. Parry Dwight David Eisenhower was born on october 14 1890. We are about to celebrate the 120 for the anniversary of his birth 125th anniversary of his birth. One thing is clear to me. That he has a legacy from the war that is his greatest legacy. He defeated hitler and save the world from evil. Cap top that, dash cant top that, ok . If his greatest legacy is that he defeated hitler, liberated europe and save the world from itself, why do we continue studying him . No matter how long we study him that will always be his greatest legacy. The answer to that question could take an entire hour but the short version is this. We continue to study aspects of his legacy to get a more robust picture of who we as. Who he is. I submit to you tonight that you will not understand dwight d. Eisenhower as the man president , or general unless you look through the lens of Public Relations. I propose in my book that Dwight Eisenhower is perhaps the greatest Public Relations president in American History. Now i can channel my dissertation director, dr. David davies. If you were in the back row he would be scratching his head. Best keyword in the back row he would be scratching his head if he were in the back row he would be scratching his head. What do you mean by that . Not that he was the greatest practitioner because he wasnt although he is among the crowd. I submit to you that he made systemic changes in the Communications Field but transformed that transformed the field of Public Relations more than any other president that was on it. There is a scholar named craig allen that wrote a book called eisenhower and the mass media. He looked at what the title said, eisenhower and the mass media