Sweet taste of liberty : a true story of slavery and restitution in America
Title:
Sweet taste of liberty : a true story of slavery and restitution in America
Author:
McDaniel, W. Caleb (William Caleb), 1979-
ISBN:
9780190846992
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
c2019.
Physical Description:
viii, 340 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Contents:
The crossing -- Touseytown -- Down river -- Ward's return -- Cincinnati -- The plan -- The flight -- Raising a muss -- Wood versus Ward -- The keeper -- Natchez -- Brandon Hall -- Versailles -- Revolution -- The march -- Arthur -- Robertson County -- Dawn and doom -- Nashville -- A rather interesting case -- Story of a slave -- The verdict.
Abstract:
"In Sweet Taste of Liberty, W. Caleb McDaniel focuses on the experience of a freed slave who was sold back into slavery, eventually freed again, and who then sued the man who had sold her back into bondage. Henrietta Wood was born into slavery, but in 1848, she was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed. In 1855, however, a wealthy Kentucky businessman named Zebulon Ward, who colluded with Wood's employer, abducted Wood and sold her back into bondage. In the years that followed before and during the Civil War, she gave birth to a son and was forced to march to Texas. She obtained her freedom a second time after the war and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for $20,000 in damages--now known as reparations. Astonishingly, after ten years of litigation, Henrietta Wood won her case. In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500 and the decision stuck on appeal. While nowhere close to the amount she had demanded, this may be the largest amount of money ever awarded by an American court in restitution for slavery. Wood went on to live until 1912"-- Provided by publisher.
Subject Term:
Publication Date:
2019
