Family or freedom people of color in the antebellum south new directions in southern history ebook west emily amazonca kindle store. Family or freedom is a sophisticated and subtle work that sheds important new light on the legal and social complexities that underpinned both slave and free societies in the late antebellum and civil war south west locates the uneasy and little understood subject of enslavement petitions within the broader history of the hardening of the color line and the growth of the proslavery argument . In the antebellum south the presence of free people of color was problematic to the white population not only were they possible assistants to enslaved people and potential members of the labor force their very existence undermined popular justifications for slavery it is no surprise that by the end of the civil war nine southern states had enacted legal provisions for the voluntary . Family or freedom people of color in the antebellum south new directions in southern history dec 09 2020 posted by horatio alger jr public library text id 0921274a online pdf ebook epub library begins in seventeenth century virginia and culminates with laws pertaining to certificates of freedom expulsion download citation family or freedom people of color in the. Family or freedom investigates the incentives for free african americans living in the antebellum south to sacrifice their liberty for a life in bondage