A General History of the Burr Family, With a Genealogical Record from 1193 To 1891 by Charles Burr Todd, first published in 1891, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.
America's legal consciousness was high during the era that saw the imprisonment of abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison, the execution of slave revolutionary Nat Turner, and the hangings of John Brown and his Harpers Ferry co-conspirators. Jeannine Marie DeLombard examines how debates over slavery in the three decades before the Civil War employed legal language to "try" the case for slavery in the court of public opinion via popular print media. Discussing autobiographies by Frederick Douglass, a scandal narrative about Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist speech by Henry David Thoreau, sentimental fiction by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a proslavery novel by William MacCreary Burwell, DeLombard argues that American literature of the era cannot be fully understood without an appreciation for the slavery debate in the courts and in print. Combining legal, literary, and book history approaches, Slavery on Trial provides a refreshing alternative to the official perspectives offered by the nation's founding documents, legal treatises, statutes, and judicial decisions. DeLombard invites us to view the intersection of slavery and law as so many antebellum Americans did--through the lens of popular print culture.