Book contents
- As If She Were Free
- As If She Were Free
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Elizabeth Catlett and the Form of Emancipation
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Claiming Emancipation during the Rise of New World Slavery
- Part II Experiencing Freedom during Slavery’s Expansion
- Part III Envisaging Emancipation during Second Slavery
- 14 Bessy Chambers, Nineteenth-Century Jamaica
- 15 Minerva, Nineteenth-Century Téjas and Louisiana (US), and Mexico
- 16 Cécile Fatiman and Petra Carabalí, Late Eighteenth-Century Haiti and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cuba
- 17 Mary Ellen Pleasant, Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts and California (US)
- 18 Gabriela, Nineteenth-Century Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
- 19 Maria Firmina dos Reis, Nineteenth-Century Maranhão (Brazil)
- Part IV Enacting Emancipation in the Aftermath of Slavery
- Bibliography
- Index
15 - Minerva, Nineteenth-Century Téjas and Louisiana (US), and Mexico
from Part III - Envisaging Emancipation during Second Slavery
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020
- As If She Were Free
- As If She Were Free
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Elizabeth Catlett and the Form of Emancipation
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Claiming Emancipation during the Rise of New World Slavery
- Part II Experiencing Freedom during Slavery’s Expansion
- Part III Envisaging Emancipation during Second Slavery
- 14 Bessy Chambers, Nineteenth-Century Jamaica
- 15 Minerva, Nineteenth-Century Téjas and Louisiana (US), and Mexico
- 16 Cécile Fatiman and Petra Carabalí, Late Eighteenth-Century Haiti and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cuba
- 17 Mary Ellen Pleasant, Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts and California (US)
- 18 Gabriela, Nineteenth-Century Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
- 19 Maria Firmina dos Reis, Nineteenth-Century Maranhão (Brazil)
- Part IV Enacting Emancipation in the Aftermath of Slavery
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 1834, an enslaved woman named Minerva submitted a petition to the U.S. District Court of Western Louisiana, claiming that her late master had freed her and her three children in his will but that his wife, Rachel, had “forcibly carried” them from their home in Arkansas to Mexico in order to continue holding them in bondage. Minerva’s story, recovered from previously unexamined records of the U.S. District Court of Western Louisiana, reveals that freedom was less a “natural state” to be enjoyed than a legal claim to be defended. Cases like Minerva’s also had consequences beyond the courtroom, contributing to a growing misperception in both Mexico and the United States that the Mexican authorities had adopted the “freedom principle” and fully abolished slavery. These rumored policies would prove what the Anglo colonists in Texas had long suspected—that their rights would never be assured under Mexican rule.
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- As If She Were FreeA Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas, pp. 274 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020