The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom (Early American Studies)

Chronicles the history of emancipation through the cradle-to-grave experiences of a remarkable generation of black northernersThe Rising Generation chronicles the long history of emancipation in the United States through the cradle-to-grave experiences of a generation of black New Yorkers.Born into precarious freedom after the American Revolution and reaching adulthood in the lead-up to the Civil War, this remarkable generation ultimately played an outsized role in political and legal conflicts over slavery's future, influencing both the nation's path to the Civil War and changes to the US Constitution. Through exhaustive research in archives across New York State, where the largest enslaved population in the North resided at the time of the American Revolution, Sarah L.H. Gronningsater begins by exploring how English colonial laws shaped late eighteenth-century gradual abolition acts that freed children born to enslaved mothers.The boys and girls affected by these laws were born into