Race and Slavery Petitions Project

FAIN: RZ-20811-02

University of North Carolina, Greensboro (Greensboro, NC 27412-5068)
Loren L. Schweninger (Project Director: September 2001 to April 2007)

To support work on an edition of petitions to 15 southern state legislatures and county courts concerning race, slavery, and free blacks from the time of the American Revolution to the Civil War.

Associated Products

The Southern Debate Over Slavery: Volume 1, Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 1778-1864 (Book)
Title: The Southern Debate Over Slavery: Volume 1, Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 1778-1864
Editor: Loren Schweninger
Abstract: In the years following the American Revolution, growing numbers of Southerners petitioned their legislatures for redress of grievances. Only three thousand petitions concerning slavery have escaped the ravages of time, or the disinterest of contemporaries, but the surviving documents provide a good representation from the Upper and Lower South, eastern and western states, and across the decades from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. They also offer material on a great variety of topics, including slaves who were obedient and faithful to their owners, interracial sex, free people of color, the black family, and attitudes among various groups of blacks and whites. The petitions come mainly from seven states--Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas--with only a scattering from Florida, Alabama, Maryland, and Missouri, and only one each from Georgia and Louisiana. No legislative petitions, it appears, have survived from Kentucky or Arkansas.
Year: 2001
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/petitions-to-southern-legislatures-1778-1864/oclc/248271119&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/76msn6mt9780252026324.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Type: Edited Volume
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780252026324

The Southern Debate Over Slavery: Volume 2, Petitions to Southern County Courts, 1775-1867 (Book)
Title: The Southern Debate Over Slavery: Volume 2, Petitions to Southern County Courts, 1775-1867
Editor: Loren Schweninger
Abstract: To select one hundred and eighty county court petitions out of a total of more than fourteen thousand five hundred is at best a difficult undertaking. In selecting the documents for this volume, every effort has been made to represent the remarkable diversity of topics, petitioners, defendants, geographical locations, legal venues, and language characteristics found in the larger collection. The editors’ primary objective has been to offer the reader as broad a selection as possible and to include the voices of all the participants: black and white, slave and free, slaveholder and non-slaveholder, male and female.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/petitions-to-southern-county-courts-1775-1867/oclc/254874430&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/68ced6hp9780252032608.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Type: Edited Volume
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780252032608

Race and Slavery Petitions Project Microfilm Edition (Acquisitions/Materials Collection)
Name: Race and Slavery Petitions Project Microfilm Edition
Abstract: 151 reels of microfilm of approximately 14,500 petitions to county courts druing the period 1775-1867 with seven guide indexes totalling approximately 4,000 pages. Petitions come from the southern states.
Year: 2005

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