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Strengthening Slavery’S Border, Undermining Slavery: Fugitive Slaves And The Legal Regulation Of Black Mississippi River Crossing, 1804-1860, Jesse Nasta

The Confluence (2009-2020)

In the decades before the Civil War, St. Louis sat on a border between slave and free states. Jesse Nasta documents the role of common carriers—steamboats—on the Mississippi River for escaping slaves and the efforts of government to hold steamboat operators accountable for those escapes—efforts that reached all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court. This article is the recipient of the 2017 Tatom Award for the best student paper on a regional topic.