Redemption Songs

While hundreds of books have been written about slavery, in the main they tend to be either microhistories of individual slaves and slave families or broad social histories of the peculiar institution. Redemption Songs uniquely features both approaches. VanderVelde not only knits together the stories of a dozen distinct individuals with one thing in common-their status as litigants-and little else, she also provides a rich and eye-opening account of the legal foundations of the larger system.