A study of the life of a Maryland slave, his escape to freedom in New Jersey, and the trials that ensued. James Collins Johnson made his name by escaping slaver

From a brilliant young legal scholar comes this sweeping history of American ideas of belonging and citizenship, told through the stories of fourteen legal case

Before 1854, most Northerners managed to ignore the distant unpleasantness of slavery. But that year an escaped Virginia slave, Anthony Burns, was captured and

"Maroons, self-organized communities of runaway slaves, existed wherever slavery was present. One of the most vital and persistent maroon communities was tucked

“A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review,