Download or read book The Southern Debate over Slavery written by Loren Schweninger and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-02-12 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incomparably rich source of period information, the second volume of The Southern Debate over Slavery offers a representative and extraordinary sampling of the thousands of petitions about issues of race and slavery that southerners submitted to county courts between the American Revolution and Civil War. These petitions, filed by slaveholders and nonslaveholders, slaves and free blacks, women and men, abolitionists and staunch defenders of slavery, constitute a uniquely important primary source. The collection records with great immediacy and minute detail the dynamics and legal restrictions that shaped southern society.