Slaves' courtroom fights for liberation revealed

ST. LOUIS — The creamy linen pages are creased and torn, smudged with grease or sweat. The ink has faded to sepia. A squashed fly is smeared on the edge of one sheet.

Through these tattered documents, the unheard voices of slaves call out for justice.

Tempe complains in 1818 that her master has failed "to supply her with clothing necessary for comfort and decency." Ralph, in 1830, expresses "fear that James and Coleman Duncan will take me by force from this place and sell me." Daniel, in 1835, states that he is "entitled to his freedom."

Winny speaks, and Celeste, and Milly, Arch and Anson and Matilda, Charlotte and Julia, Jerry, Rachel. These men and women had no last names, could not read or write, were bought and sold like livestock. Yet, out of courage and desperation, they and hundreds of others sued for freedom in the white man's court.

Their stories, their voices, are emerging as Missouri state archivists sort through 4 million court documents that had been stashed away in metal cabinets, untouched since the Civil War.

Archivists have uncovered 283 "freedom suits" filed in St. Louis from 1806 to 1865.

Decades before Dred Scott became the most famous slave to sue for freedom, the St. Louis courthouse echoed with the defiant voices of many who refused to accept their bondage. They dictated their petitions to lawyers or clerks and signed them with faltering Xs.

Historians had no idea how many slaves had put their faith, and fates, in the courts. They thought Dred Scott was an anomaly. They now are finding evidence of an underground grapevine that emboldened slaves to sue. Dozens won, persuading juries of 12 white men to set them free. A few won damages against their masters.

"This is a stunning find. It's just phenomenal," said Lea VanderVelde, a University of Iowa law professor.

Many slaves largely were unsupervised in 19th-century St. Louis. Relative freedom of movement allowed slaves and free blacks to mingle. They swapped news of friends who had sued successfully, exchanged tips about the best lawyers or most sympathetic judges.

Whites filled newspapers of the 1830s and '40s with rants about how freedom suits were subverting discipline among their slaves.

"You get a sense of how difficult it was for the state to maintain the institution of slavery. People want freedom," said David Konig, a history professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "Their language in these lawsuits is not supplicating. They're not coming into court on their hands and knees. They're demanding."

The ink-blotched pages speak to the atrocities of slavery: a child sold downriver, a master quick with whippings. But they also reveal the private horrors: The tension that free blacks felt in a slave state, knowing they could be seized. The anguish of a slave who toiled years to buy her freedom, only to have the master renege.

For a century and a half, the cases sat in metal drawers. The court clerk rebuffed most requests to explore them.

A newly elected court clerk took office several years ago and invited state archivist Kenneth Winn to restore and organize the collection.

Archivists, interns and volunteers now spend their days unfolding yellowed documents, brushing off coal dust and re-humidifying paper to make it less brittle. They scrape away sticky red wax used to seal the pages together.

Once they have restored the files, they read them. Some documents appear to be direct transcriptions of slaves' testimony. Others have been translated into stilted legal language.

The most famous of the names they have come across is Dred Scott, who sued for freedom in 1846 on the grounds that he had lived for years in free states with his master, an Army surgeon.

Scott won in circuit court, but the Supreme Court in 1857 ruled that he had no right to sue since he was black, and thus, not a citizen. That decision helped propel the country to Civil War.

The recent discovery has put the Scott case in context as one of the last freedom suits to be filed. The documents also make clear just how shocking the Supreme Court ruling must have been to blacks in St. Louis.

The state for decades set aside taxpayer money to hire lawyers for slaves who sued for freedom. (Virginia, also a slave state, offered a similar program.)

Missouri also wrote into law several safeguards to protect slaves from retaliation when they sued. Defendants were required to put up a substantial bond, as much as $2,000. They would forfeit the money if they failed to show at trial, or if they sold slaves downriver before their day in court.

As further protection, judges sometimes took custody of slaves and hired them out, allowing them to keep their wages if they won their cases.

Slaves had three legal grounds for suing. Some claimed they were free but had been kidnapped into slavery. Others insisted they had bought their freedom or been emancipated by a kind master.

By far the most common argument was the one Dred Scott set forth: When a master brought a slave into free territory, the bonds of slavery crumbled and could not be reasserted when the master moved back into a slave state.

Missouri courts accepted that argument throughout most of the 1820s and '30s.

As the political climate in Missouri tilted ever more supportive of slavery in the decades before the Civil War, it became tougher for slaves to win. The state quit providing free lawyers in 1856. Freedom suits all but stopped after the Dred Scott ruling.