Böcker av Jeannine Marie DeLombard

Examines how debates over slavery in the three decades before the Civil War employed legal language to ""try"" the case for slavery in the court of public opinion via popular print media. This title argues that American literature of the era cannot be fully understood without an appreciation for the slavery debate in the courts and in print.

In the Shadow of the Gallows reveals how a sense of racialized culpability shaped Americans' understandings of personhood prior to the Civil War. Jeannine Marie DeLombard draws from legal, literary, and popular texts to address fundamental questions about race, responsibility, and American civic belonging.