Dark places of the earth : the voyage of the slave ship Antelope / Jonathan M. Bryant.

First edition.

New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2015]

©2015.

xxi, 376 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map, portraits ; 25 cm

A professor of history who specializes in slavery and constitutional law investigates one of the most significant--and unjustly forgotten--Supreme Court cases in American history involving the slave ship Antelope and the three hundred African lives at stake.
In 1820, a suspicious vessel was spotted lingering off the coast of northern Florida: the Spanish slave ship Antelope. Since the United States had outlawed its own participation in the international slave trade more than a decade before, the ship's almost 300 African captives were considered illegal cargo under American laws. But with slavery still a critical part of the American economy, it would eventually fall to the Supreme Court to determine whether or not they were slaves at all, and if so, what should be done with them. Bryant recounts the eight-year legal conflict that followed, during which time the Antelope's human cargo were mercilessly put to work on the plantations of Georgia, even as their freedom remained in limbo.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-353) and index.

STA

KF228.A673 B79 2015

English

9780871406750 (hardcover)
0871406756 (hardcover)