Relying on extensive surviving original records, this book analyzes the November 1851 trial in the federal circuit court of Robert Morris, the second black admi

In 1834 Harvard dropout Richard Henry Dana Jr. became a common seaman, and soon his Two Years Before the Mast became a classic. Literary acclaim did not erase t

This is the story of how an illiterate black man from Virginia found himself to be the catalyst of a dramatic episode of rebellion and legal wrangling before th

A new interpretation of the Underground Railroad that places violence at the center of the story.

A synthesis of legal, political, and social history to show how the post-founding generations were forced to rethink and substantially revise the U.S. constitut