From Booklist
In England, near the end of the eighteenth century, a legal ruling that came to be known as the Mansfield Judgment set the precedent for outlawing slavery in the modern Western world. Somerset, a black American slave, accompanied his master on a journey to England, where slavery had been outlawed. Somerset legally petitioned Lord Mansfield, the premier jurist of the period, to let him remain in England as a free man. Granville Sharpe, England's leading abolitionist, took up the cause. Wise offers a multilayered examination of the characters--the modest Sharpe and the high-born Mansfield--and legal confluences between British tradition and common law behind this case. He also explores the conflict between the ideals of human rights and the commercial interests of slave traders, insurers, and bankers, and the underlying threat to the social order of oppressive apprenticeships as the institution of slavery was challenged. This is a complex and absorbing look at the legal and social forces that eventually led to the outcry against slavery throughout the Western world. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Book Description
The case of James Somerset, an escaped slave, in June of 1772 in London's Westminster Hall was a decisive turning point in human history. Steven Wise has uncovered fascinating new revelations in this case, which statesmen of the time threatened would bring the economy of the British Empire to a crashing halt. In a gripping, hour-by-hour narrative of the trial and the inflamed participants, Wise leads the reader to the extraordinary and unexpected decision by the great conservative judge, Lord Mansfield, which led to the United States' own abolition movement. As the case drew to a close, and defenders of slavery pleaded with him to maintain the system, Mansfield's reply has resounded down through more than two centuries: "Let Justice be done, though the Heavens may fall."
About the Author
Steven M. Wise, J.D., has practiced animal law for over twenty years and has taught at the Harvard, Vermont, and John Marshall law schools. He is President of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, which he founded in 1995. The author of Rattling the Cage, praised by Cass Sunstein as "an impassioned, fascinating, and in many ways startling book" (New York Times Book Review), and Drawing the Line, which Nature called "provocative and disturbing," he has been profiled nationally by such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time magazine.
