African American Life and Culture in Slavery: Overview

Large collection of abolitionist and african-american papers, books, plamphlets and other items. published in the 19th century.

"This collection brings together a essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world: every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, all reported state and federal cases on slavery, every English-language legal commentary on slavery published before 1920, and all Congressional debates from the Continental Congress to 1880. . We have provided more than a thousand pamphlets and books on slavery from the 19th century. We have also included many modern histories of slavery. Within this library is a section containing all modern law review articles on the subject.

This database attempts to include every statute passed in the fifteen slave states that dealt with slavery, free blacks, and the broader issue of race.

Once you enter the database choose the option for U.S. Statutes at Large. This will allow you to search for Federal laws relating to slavery.

These volumes, published in 1862, contain brief abstracts of many hundreds of state laws passed by general assemblies on the subject of race and slavery in the United States. It serves as a guide for tracking down laws when one doesn't have a particular citation.

Quality overview of the laws of slavery, given by an author who was himself opposed to the institution.

This archive offers online access to colonial, state and municipal codes, documents relating to constitutional conventions, and other resources in American legal history.

Compilation of state and federal cases pertaining to slavery, as drawn from colonial records, state and federal reporters and other sources. This source includes many cases that are not readily available anywhere else.

Use the "Look up a Legal Case" option to find state and federal decisions. Works best for known citations or parties.

Includes full transcript of cases and amicus briefs when available.

Contains over a hundred pamphlets and books concerning the experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The documents comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, and other works of historical importance.

Based on holdings of the law libraries of Harvard and Yale, and the Library of the Bar of the City of New York.

All extant relevant legislative petitions and a selected group of county court petitions from the slaveholding states and the District of Columbia, during the period from the American Revolution through the Civil War. Topics include information on slaves as property, interracial mixing, divorce, free blacks, more.

Transcripts of discussion in Congress. Run a search and then limit by date and to comments to find comments in Congress relating to topics in which you are interested or to follow debates chronologically.

Collections of legal treatises that provide insight to how laws and legal positions were interpreted at the time the treaties was written.

Choose the "Law Journal Library" and after your search limit to "articles" and limit by date. Articles will provide contemporary scholarship on legal issues of the antebellum period.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).

1891 edition. Full title is " A dictionary of law : containing definitions of the terms and phrases of American and English jurisprudence, ancient and modern; including the principal terms of international, constitutional, and commercial law : with a collection of legal maxims and numerous select titles from the civil law and other foreign systems."

1850 publication