This book explores the expulsion and enslavement of free people of color in the antebellum South. It considers why Southern states moved towards expelling and enslaving free blacks in the 1850s, and it situates these legislative debates within the context of a growing number of restrictions imposed upon free people of color over the course of the antebellum era. Explanations about why some free people of color petitioned for residency rights or enslavement are at the heart of this book, which argues that some free people of color placed their families first in “choosing” enslavement over freed ... More

This book explores the expulsion and enslavement of free people of color in the antebellum South. It considers why Southern states moved towards expelling and enslaving free blacks in the 1850s, and it situates these legislative debates within the context of a growing number of restrictions imposed upon free people of color over the course of the antebellum era. Explanations about why some free people of color petitioned for residency rights or enslavement are at the heart of this book, which argues that some free people of color placed their families first in “choosing” enslavement over freedom. Anxious about being separated from beloved family members through increasingly repressive expulsion laws. In the face of rising impoverishment, some free blacks took the desperate measure of seeking enslavement for themselves, and sometimes their family members. Legislation on expulsion and enslavement allowed free people of color to petition state legislatures or country courts requesting residency or bondage, and free blacks used the law to seek both during the 1850s. Requests for enslavement, while sometimes motivated largely by the oppressive pressure of whites, were also influenced by the initiative of free people of color themselves.