Books in the Series on Law, Society, and Politics in the Midwest series

In 1846 two slaves, Dred and Harriet Scott, filed petitions for their freedom in the Old Courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri. As the first true civil rights case decided by the U.S.

In 1846, two slaves, Dred and Harriet Scott, filed petitions for their freedom in the Old Courthouse in St Louis, Missouri. It is the first true civil rights case decided by the US Supreme Court. This title offers a collection of essays that revisits the history of the case and its aftermath in American life and law.

The History of Michigan Law offers the first serious survey of Michigan's rich legal past. Michigan legislators have played a leading role in developing modern civil rights law, protecting the environment, and assuring the right to counsel for those accused of crimes.

On March 11, 1854, the people of Wisconsin prevented agents of the federal government from carrying away the fugitive slave, Joshua Glover. Assembling in mass outside the Milwaukee courthouse, they demanded that the federal officers respect his civil liberties as they would those of any other citizen of the state.

Explores the many ways that the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio has affected the region, the nation, the development of American law, and American politics. This book illustrates the range of cases and issues that have come before the court.

Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War represents pathbreaking research on the rise of U.S. Army intelligence operations in the Midwest during the American Civil War and counters long-standing assumptions about Northern politics and society.

Gus Reed was a freed slave who traveled north as Sherman's March was sweeping through Georgia in 1864. His journey ended in Springfield, Illinois, a city undergoing fundamental changes as its white citizens struggled to understand the political, legal, and cultural consequences of emancipation and black citizenship.

Ohios Rufus P. Ranney embodied many of the most intriguing social and political tensions of his time. He was an anticorporate campaigner who became John D. Rockefellers favorite lawyer. A student and law partner of abolitionist Benjamin F. Wade, Ranney acquired an antislavery reputation and recruited troops for the Union army; but as a Democratic candidate for governor he denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in the territories, and during the Civil War and Reconstruction he condemned Republican policies.Ranney was a key delegate at Ohios second constitutional convention and a two-time justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. He advocated equality and limited government as understood by radical Jacksonian Democrats. Scholarly discussions of Jacksonian jurisprudence have primarily focused on a handful of United States Supreme Court cases, but Ranneys opinions, taken as a whole, outline a broader approach to judicial decision making.A founder of the Ohio State Bar Association, Ranney was immensely influential but has been understudied until now. He left no private papers, even destroying his own correspondence. In The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney, David M. Gold works with the public record to reveal the contours of Ranneys life and work. The result is a new look at how Jacksonian principles crossed the divide of the Civil War and became part of the fabric of American law and at how radical antebellum Democrats transformed themselves into Gilded Age conservatives.

On July 2 and 3, 1917, race riots rocked the small industrial city of East St Louis, Illinois. This title takes the reader beyond that pivotal time in the city's history to explore black people's activism from the antebellum era to the eve of the post - World War II civil rights movement.

In the antebellum Midwest, Americans looked to the law, and specifically to the jury, to navigate the terrain of a rapidly changing society. Through an analysis of the composition of juries and an examination of their courtroom experiences, the author demonstrates how central the law was for people who lived in Abraham Lincoln's America.

Historians have long argued that the Great War eradicated German culture from American soil. This book examines the experiences of German-Americans living in Missouri during the First World War, evaluating the personal relationships at the local level that shaped their lives and the way that they were affected by national war effort guidelines.

Beginning in 1803, the Ohio legislature enacted what came to be known as the Black Laws. These laws instituted barriers against blacks entering the state and placed limits on black testimony against whites. This book tells the story of racial oppression in Ohio.

A study of the odd disparity between the number of women on death row who are executed and the number of men. The Ohio system stands as typical of the nation and this work challenges the overriding notion of fairness in the application of and rationale for the death penalty.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, legislators in the Nebraska Territory grappled with the responsibility of forming a state government as well as with the larger issues of reconstructing the Union, protecting civil rights, and redefining federal-state relations.

In addition to having a reputation as an epicenter for middle American values, Indiana is a cultural crossroads that has produced a legal and constitutional heritage. This book traces this history by identifying the themes that mark the state's legal development and establish its broader context in the Midwest and nation.